Safe Spaces And Dangerous Places

I've come to the conclusion that one of the most dangerous places around is home. Not physically, but from the perspective of free speech. I arrived at that determination after learning that one of the reasons that academic institutions were establishing “safe spaces” was that students wanted a place to express their own opinions, and didn't want to hear someone offering anything that was in conflict with it. It's likely that in their own homes they were expected to be seen but not heard. So what they couldn't say at home was what they sought to have a place to say in the university.

It's a noble idea to want to exercise your right of free speech, although I think that the students, and more regrettably the universities, are missing the point. It was my (naïve) belief that one of the main purpose of higher education was to expose the students to ideas that differed from the ones with which they were familiar. It was all part of the learning process, and the goal was to prepare students for the “real” world where they would have to hear such ideas and analyze them so they could make their own decisions.

Perhaps I was mistaken, and I am confused about the role of the university. If those in academia consider their obligation to be to make students comfortable, the approach is reasonable. As would more parties be, except that some of their charges may take such revelry as a form of “microaggression,” and they might be offended and protest.

Or perhaps I am misunderstanding both the university's goal and the way that it is satisfying student needs during the time that it is broadening their perspectives. Unlikely as it may be, the path to the toleration, and, indeed, the celebration, of real free speech and education may be viewed as requiring students to be led there slowly. And universities bay be subtly trying to bring their novices to that path.

Trying to imagine how that might be done, I wonder if what these in loco parentis institutions do is to assign every new student to a single room where there is no one to disagree with him (or her). Any visitor to that room will be expected to agree with all the opinions he expresses. And that means that when he visits a friend in another room – and college freshmen (and women) are a gregarious lot – it is incumbent on him to listen to, and to agree with, the views expressed by the room's occupant. Whether or not he agrees with what he hears, if he wants friends he'll have to tolerate their views. Maybe he'll even pay attention to what they think, and the thinking behind it. Sometimes the views of others make sense.

Having said it, however, I don't believe it. From what I've seen in the media, I am of the opinion that the universities are among the most dangerous places for learning that exist. Blame it on society itself if you choose, but there is an increasing focus on the spoken word and its implications. Fearing offending others and the “slippery slope” of faulting those who fault our society, students slide, instead on the slippery slope of intolerance of opinions that they think may not be popular or in keeping with their own. They don't want to hear them, and they don't want others to hear them. Instead of free speech, which they claim to support, they favor limiting speech to fashionable opinions – opinions in which they've been indoctrinated.

And the universities are supportive. Many of the faculty came of age at a time when rebellion and opposition to “the establishment” were de rigueur and they applaud, and encourage, such an approach on the part of those under their tutelage. It is their mission to inculcate distrust in them – distrust of the culture in which they live and distrust of any who support it or who disagree with them. People like that are wrong and have no right to be heard. They're Nazis, or supporters of apartheid, and their views are invalid and disruptive. Disrupting them is perfectly right and necessary.

And university administrations all too often cower before such forces. “Cower” may be the wrong word because it implies an unwilling surrender to superior forces. (Superior in strength, not wisdom.) All-too-often, unfortunately, the administrations agree with the actions of the masses. It's easy to attribute to inexperience and fearfulness, to the apprehension that faculty, students, and, most importantly, the press will view them as supporting unfashionable causes if they take a stand against mob censorship, so they either take no action against protesters or support them. The university is not a safe place for those who don't agree with majority opinion, even if that opinion is uninformed.

Home may be seen as dangerous, but the places to which many of our youth – and the teachers of the future – “escape” are far worse. Indeed, they are not safe spaces but the most dangerous to which they can go.

January 2, 2017