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Universities should be safe spaces from assault and bodily harm, but not from ideas and opinions people might find offensive
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The University of Glasgow hit peak woke when it recently announced that it will be urging professors to avoid using the phrase trigger warning.
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Professors have been advised to stop saying trigger warning before sensitive content is talked about because it could be too triggering for their thin-skinned students. Instead, theyve been asked to say content advisory prior to speaking about sensitive matters, in order to ensure U of G remains a safe space.
While this incident took place in the United Kingdom, Canadian schools are not immune to this type of thinking.
A group of current and former students at Ryerson Universitys School of Journalism caused an internal revolt in March, releasing an open letter that claimed the school had contributed to an unsafe learning environment because they were subjected to words and opinions they disapproved of. This letter was written after a group of students was frustrated by the facultys response to a human rights complaint that I initiated against the Eyeopener, one of Ryersons campus newspapers.
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Likewise, for the past year, community members at Wilfrid Laurier University have called for professors David Haskell and William McNally to be fired for the crime of being conservative. Haskell and McNally have been vocal defenders of freedom of expression at Laurier, which the woke mob sees as unacceptable.
People might hope this safe-space culture would stop at the doors of universities, but it has extended into the work world, as well. This idea of not wanting to offend people contributed to the resignation of Bari Weiss, an opinion writer and editor at the New York Times, in 2020. Weiss said she was annoyed with how stories that didnt explicitly promote progressive causes needed to have every detail scrutinized before being published.
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Employees at Penguin Random House Canada proclaimed in November that they were offended when it was announced that the company would be publishing Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson. The employees said the book should not be published by Penguin because they did not want Petersons views to be platformed.
Universities should be safe spaces from assault and bodily harm, but not from ideas and opinions people might find offensive. The harmfulness of safe-space culture was explored at length in the 2018 book, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt.
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The authors said they wrote the book because they observed that students were pathologizing words and ideas as dangerous and violent, which they found illogical. This change started to occur around 2013 or 2014, and became more widespread from 2015 to 2017.
In the book, Lukianoff and Haidt argue that safe-space culture does not work because it relies on three great untruths: what does not kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good and evil people. These untruths contradict modern psychological research and ancient philosophical wisdom, and serve to hurt people who embrace them.
Indeed, the authors found that embracing these untruths has led to increased depression, anxiety and suicides among students. In other words, what was supposed to help students has left them unprepared to deal with stressors and challenges, which leads to increased suffering.
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Lukianoff and Haidt argue students need stressors and challenges in order to learn, adapt and grow. But universities consistently do the opposite, teaching students that they are candles that can easily be extinguished, instead of fires that thrive when faced with adversity.
Trigger warnings, in particular, often have the opposite effect of what they are intended to. A 2018 study out of Harvard University suggested that trigger warnings intensify the stigma associated with trauma, as they serve to enforce the idea that trauma is central to peoples identities.
The study went on to explain that trigger warnings are terrible for people who have never experienced trauma, as they can lead to people thinking that they are not resilient and may lead them to think that they are vulnerable to developing mental illnesses.
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Using trigger warnings communicates to students that words can be harmful. After all, trigger warnings serve as threat-confirmations. This inclination to see threats where they do not exist is associated with an increased risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the study.
The result is that many conservatives are now afraid to say what they really think. A recent study from the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology found that 58 per cent of right-wing professors in Canada claim their university is a hostile climate for their views.
It also found that 45 per cent of Canadian academics say they would discriminate against a colleague who supports former U.S. president Donald Trump, that 17 per cent would discriminate against a right-leaning grant bid and 11 per cent would be more critical of a right-leaning paper submission.
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The study went on to claim that 34 per cent of somewhat right grad students and 62 per cent of very right grad students in North America and the United Kingdom believe sharing their views would make their lives difficult. As a result, right-wing grad students end up being less inclined to pursue academic careers, as conservatives are made to feel like they have to shut up or face consequences.
Given all of the evidence that safe-space culture does not work, I find it confusing why so many students and professors support it. I presented this evidence to various people throughout my academic career at Ryerson, but faculty and students consistently ignored the facts presented to them. I recall one instance where I recommended a journalism professor read The Coddling of the American Mind to understand why safe-space culture does not work, and he said he would never pick it up.
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There are plenty of basic steps universities can take to stop this craziness: adopt a free speech policy based on the Chicago statement; stop using the word unsafe except when it pertains to matters of physical safety; and remove their radical diversity, inclusion and equity offices and instead encourage unity among faculty and students. These solutions might be unpopular, but they are the right moves.
Former British prime minister Winston Churchill said that, A state of society where men may not speak their minds cannot endure long. People should be free to speak their minds on university campuses without being punished. If freedom of expression remains a touchy subject on university campuses, the prospects of having a functioning democracy are minimal.
National Post
Jonathan Bradley recently graduated from the journalism program at Ryerson University.
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Jonathan Bradley: Campus safe-space culture is a threat to the very fabric of our society - National Post