Read this interview recently and I wanted to post it for comment re: free speech on college campuses:
Greg Lukianoff on 'The Coddling of the American Mind' - The Atlantic
As a professor, I see some truth to the trends mentioned.
From the article:
In that story, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” Lukianoff, a First Amendment lawyer and the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (fire), and Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University, observed that “in the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don’t like,” and argued that capitulating to requests to banish certain ideas from classrooms and campus events would likely increase student anxiety and depression, rather than ameliorate it.
Three years later, political polarization has only increased, as has anxiety among young people. And unrest on college campusescontinues. “Everything’s speeding up,” Lukianoff says. Haidt and Lukianoff recently published a book, also titled The Coddling of the American Mind, where they go into more detail about the three “Great Untruths” they believe are behind free-speech controversies at America’s universities:
- “What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker,” or the idea that exposure to offensive or difficult ideas is traumatic
- “Always trust your feelings,” or the notion that feeling upset by an idea is a reason to discount it
- “Us versus them,” or homogenous tribal thinking that leads people to shame those whose views fall outside that of their group
I guess I haven't read the book so I can't speak fully, but I'm wondering what this author's understanding of "safe spaces" and "trigger warnings" actually is. For example, traditionally trigger warnings are in place when you are discussing in detail or describing in detail topics of war, rape, violence, racism, etc... College students are most at risk for sexual assault. If you are teaching a class on "The Psychology of War" (a class I did take in college), and you are on the topic of sexual violence as a tactic of war and its affects on victims and go into detail about comfort women and the sexual enslavement of Yazidi women by ISIL, I believe it is ethical to provide a trigger warning for the class that day. You do not know if a young student in your classroom was recently sexually assaulted on campus or perhaps has a history of sexual abuse and how that might retraumatize him/her. As psychologists, I would hope we can all see and understand why a warning before hand so a student has the choice to participate in class that day, take a breather, or pull the professor aside to explain his/her situation might be necessary. The student understands these topics might be discussed as part of the syllabus and likely wants to learn about the topic, but might still need some warning or would appreciate the sensitivity of his/her professor by being provided a trigger warning during that class. I do not think that is coddling. I think that is respecting that people have traumatic experiences that require us to be ethnical and responsible when proceeding.
This is not an extreme example. On college campuses, topics of racism, rape, war, violence, etc... are discussed regularly as part of pedagogy in the humanities. Probably less so on the sciences. I was a biology major and it really didn't come up in any of my classes. However political science, psychology, sociology, history, and even english classes would probably regularly feature challenging topics that, I agree, young people SHOULD be discussing, but should also be prefaced with trigger warnings so that a student can be aware this topic is coming that day and can prepare emotionally before hand so as to best engage in the discussion, or disengage depending on their background. I think diminishing trigger warnings down to "this idea that exposure to offensive or difficult ideas is traumatic" is incredibly minimizing of peoples' very really experiences. As psychologists, we should understand why it's important to be sensitive and aware when discussing difficult topics. It doesn't mean a student in your class who is a refugee from Syria CAN'T or shouldn't participate in a discussion on genocide in WWII. Or if an African American recently had a racist encounter on campus and then arrived in their sociology class to discuss the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, they might be particularly incensed or quiet in class that day. We should be understanding of that. The topic of the class shouldn't change, but we should be aware our students have inner worlds that affect how they interface with us as instructors and we should make the class a "safe space" so that the topic is treated with sensitivity AND thorough accuracy. Both safe spaces and trigger warnings ask that students in a class should be aware of expressing their opinions in even handed ways that take into account others' perspectives and experiences, especially since we can't know those things about everyone. I do not think that is coddling. I think that is teaching productive, empathic dialogue, something we are missing in this country.
The same is true for safe spaces. Students are allowed to feel tired or exhausted by constant dialogue around difficult topics and sometimes they will want to be somewhere where the people in the room share dialogue in the same way they do. They might want to be on a college campus that recognizes the difference between two students having opposing opinions and a student yelling the "n-word" at a black student. A "safe space" isn't a campus where they discourage disagreements. It's a campus that says, "if your disagreement resulted in one student hurling offensive epithets at another student or drawing a swastika in poop on their dorm door, we'll intervene without question." The poop example is extreme, I know. College students really are just wild these days.
