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A Safe Space for Unsafe Spaces - L. Gordon Crovitz


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2016 Sep 19, 2:34pm   1,243 views  2 comments

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A Safe Space for Unsafe Spaces

Restoring free speech to campus will take resolve, but Chicago shows the way.

By L. GORDON CROVITZ
Sept. 18, 2016 5:49 p.m. ET

A University of Chicago letter welcoming freshmen with the warning they would arrive at a campus committed to “freedom of inquiry and expression” prompted a national debate on restoring free speech on campuses. The most interesting lesson is why it will be so hard for other universities to follow Chicago’s lead. The letter rejected today’s higher-education fads: “We do not support so-called ‘trigger warnings,’ we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.” Rigorous but civilized debate “may challenge you and even cause discomfort.” A few university heads tried to defend their safe spaces and trigger warnings. The president of Wesleyan dismissed the Chicago letter as a publicity stunt. Northwestern’s president wrote that his students need “spaces where members of each [racial or other identity] group feel safe.”

But now that liberal administrators and professors are increasingly becoming targets of political correctness, many would like to restore free speech. Brown University was widely mocked last year for setting up a safe space for students “with cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets and a video of frolicking puppies.” This year Brown’s president, Christina Paxson, declared in her convocation address: “Suppressing ideas at a university is akin to turning off the power at a factory.” Liberal professors are terrified they will be set upon for an inadvertent offense, as happened last year at Yale when a professor was forced out for suggesting students could pick their own Halloween costumes without instructions from the administration. Recent surveys find most university students resent having to censor themselves out of fear of offending someone else’s beliefs.

Yet restoring free speech is easier said than done. Along with the letter, the incoming Chicago students got a book titled “Academic Freedom and the Modern University.” It recounts in detail the history of freewheeling debate at Chicago since its founding in the 1890s. One factor that sets Chicago apart from other campuses is that it can rely only on serious academics for its reputation. President Robert Hutchins abolished the football team in 1939—despite many Big 10 championships—in order to focus on the life of the mind. Hutchins justified having communists speak on campus by arguing the way to rebut objectionable ideas “lies through open discussion rather than through prohibition.”

The focus on academics also helps keep politicians and celebrities at arm’s length. In the 1950s, Chicago’s mayor asked the university to award Queen Elizabeth II an honorary degree when she visited the city. “We’re happy to consider it,” the university replied. “Please send copies of her scholarly work.” In the 1960s, when many campuses were handed over to student protesters, Chicago took tough steps to retain academic integrity. In 1969, 400 protesters occupied the administration building. President Edward Levi’s goal was to protect the university’s independence, including from city police. Instead of having students arrested, he let them occupy his offices but warned they would pay the price for violating university rules. When the occupation ended, 41 students were expelled and 82 were suspended. Their parents ran an ad in the New York Times complaining that Chicago had suspended more students than Berkeley, Columbia and San Francisco State combined. A university spokesman replied: “This isn’t Berkeley, or Columbia, or San Francisco State.” Levi said: “There are values to be maintained. We are not bought and sold and transformed by that kind of pressure.”

Later, the campus was roiled when a department awarded a peace prize to Robert McNamara. Liberals were offended by his role as defense secretary during the Vietnam War, while conservatives were aghast by the harm McNamara caused developing countries when he ran the World Bank. All agreed the university should return to recognizing people only for their scholarship.

When I was a Chicago undergraduate in the 1970s, I recall a trigger warning in the form of tongue-in-cheek microaggression. The first day of an economics class the professor warned: “You will not learn Keynesian economics here. If you want to learn Keynesianism, you’re in the wrong classroom in the wrong department at the wrong university.” At the home of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, understanding monetarism and Austrian economics was more engaging than rehashing Keynes.
Ending the infantilizing of college students will take resolve. Next time administrators get demands to cancel a conservative’s speech or censor academic discussions, they can cite former Chicago President Hanna Gray’s pithy summary: “Education should not be intended to make people comfortable. It is meant to make them think.”

#MoronmanPOS

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1   justme   2016 Sep 19, 6:35pm  

Monetarism = Keynesianism, but only for the benefit of rich people (the top 0.1%)

Monetarism = Keynesianism, but without repaying debt during times of economic surplus

Why does not anyone say it? It's the truth.

2   MisdemeanorRebel   2016 Sep 19, 6:44pm  

P N Dr Lo R says

When I was a Chicago undergraduate in the 1970s, I recall a trigger warning in the form of tongue-in-cheek microaggression. The first day of an economics class the professor warned: “You will not learn Keynesian economics here. If you want to learn Keynesianism, you’re in the wrong classroom in the wrong department at the wrong university.

If it was Econ 101 or 102, the Professor was just indoctrinating students with a different bullshit narrative.

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