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"Mention of rape" and "discussion of rape in enough detail to cause discomfort" are not the same thing.
I'm sure we can find someone who is uncomfortable at the mere mention of the word. Not that we should necessarily accommodate such extremes, but how do you decide where to draw the line?
Bad move, Chicago. If the kids don't learn how to use trigger warnings and safe spaces at school, how will they know how to use all of the trigger warnings and safe spaces in the real modern world after they graduate?
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No. People arguing for "safe spaces" are generally arguing that the entire university should be a "safe space". So it's really about control over shared space and the right to police offensive dialog.
Never heard of that concept of "safe space" before. Do you have any examples of it?
But, in his ten weeks as a leader of the college, Master Christakis has not fostered this sense of community. He seems to lack the ability, quite frankly, to put aside his opinions long enough to listen to the very real hurt that the community feels. He doesn’t get it. And I don’t want to debate. I want to talk about my pain (emphasis added)." [0]
From one of the Yale protestors demanding the termination of a professor who wrote an email questioning the need to regulate student Halloween costumes, and her husband for standing by her. FWIW, the student activists at UChicago plastered their Facebook walls with expressions of solidarity with these protestors.
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/11/09/...
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"Mention of rape" and "discussion of rape in enough detail to cause discomfort" are not the same thing.
That might be true, but there are a variety of cases where we've decided to stop using a word in general in order to avoid causing undue distress; "slave" (i/r/t "master" and "slave") in a computing context is now generally always phrased in another way, for example.
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When my grandfather got back from WWII, he went to work at a printing press. One day a neon sign fell and shattered just across the room from him. When he became aware of himself again, he had ripped up all of his fingernails trying to dig a foxhole in the concrete floor with his bare hands. Recovery is always the goal, not keeping someone continually vulnerable. And over time, in more controlled circumstances, expos…
Why didn't he and his fellows advocate for "trigger warnings" then? Perhaps a greater sense of personal responsibility? I'm honestly curious.
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Universities ought to return to what they once were: free and open exchange of ideas. Viewed in this light, the University of Chicago's rejection of political correctness is actually a softening of extremism: allowing for, rather than actively silencing, diverse political discourse. This is in stark contrast to neighbor Chicago school DePaul, who last month blocked[0] Jewish conservative minority voice Ben Shapiro fr…
I assume people like Shapiro collect fees from the school for speaking, so would it be correct to frame the issue as students not wanting their money to go into the pockets of a person that they don't support?
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The article links to another one discussing the difficulty of teaching law in this environment, because many aspects of law are potentially "triggering": http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trouble-teaching-rap...
I don't really see the relevance of the article. It complains a lot about students being oversensitive to bad things, but it has barely anything to do with actual trigger warnings. Trigger warnings aren't about bending to the every whim of everyone you encounter. They're about labeling material ahead of time so that people can make a more informed decision about when and how they expose themselves to it. Nothing abou…
Being able to face uncomfortable ideas and events is a hallmark of an educated, resilient mind. People who never practice that resilience can hardly be considered having achieved the status that one would normally associate with a liberal university level education.
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Well the US has had obscenity laws in place until recently. It's just that the people who decided what was "upsetting" were politicians rather than students and had the power to get rid of it completely.
In practice those laws rarely if ever were applied to college classroom or similar event. Speech within a private facility by individuals has always been protected.
I think this should be a requirement for any university that wants accreditation and certainly all state-run institutions. This is a bold statement not for the Uni. of Chicago, but for every other university that does not have a similar policy in place. Sorry, but you cannot get a proper education with trigger warnings and safe spaces. Therefore, those institutions that do not have the courage to stand up for educati…
So student associations shouldn't be allowed to not allow certain people into their meetings if they're found to be abusive? Because that's the point of a safe space if you didn't know. It's not unlike support groups who can and will eject people who are known to be abusive or otherwise disclose information outside the support group without permission of all members. So, to say that safe spaces shouldn't be allowed i…
Let me reiterate that. Because trigger warnings and safe spaces are just code names for censorship, they cannot exist at the same time as a proper education, and the students that want to learn should not be punished by the stupidity of the students who only demand censorship (safe spaces and trigger warnings). That's Ethics 101. Which one would probably be aware of if one's university didn't have trigger warnings and safe spaces instead of education. But if one prefers to get ripped off and not learn, there are now plenty of universities in America that will gladly take one's money and return one some trigger warnings, safe spaces, and little else.
This is tough . With the aspirations of "civility and mutual respect" along with "rigorous debate, discussion, and even disagreement", I would hope any truly egregious edge cases disappear. In the middle, I think people have the right to remove themselves from discussions—civil or otherwise—that they don't want to listen to or engage. But that right doesn't limit others' ability to have those selfsame discussions in…
> "A trigger warning is advance notice about subject material that may be difficult for certain students to read, hear or see." But that's not what trigger warnings are for... it's not just about mild discomfort. They're to prevent panic attacks . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trauma_trigger Whether trigger warnings are effective or not is a different matter, but of course if you portray them as being about being off…
Trigger warnings seem like the same strategy only elevated on an institutional level. So while they do prevent panic attacks, they would actually do the traumatized more harm than good.
The other thing is that people can develop phobias against almost everything. So no matter how many trigger warnings the university put up, there could always be one group which finds their particular triggers not marked up well enough.