Posted on 07/28/2021 7:52:15 AM PDT by karpov
Finally, I come to my main argument: Safe spaces. I want to come out in favor of safe spaces. Not everywhere, or for all purposes, but in general I think there should be a strong presumption in favor of limited and exclusive safe spaces for any group that wants to establish one.
Of course, the group would need to have the ability and legal right to use the space and exclude “others,” but often this would involve nothing more than the ability to reserve a public space that has a door that shuts.
My main claim is that “safe spaces” for students must include ideologically selected groups, just as it includes social groups such as fraternities and sororities. Freedom of association is the key to understanding academic freedom. And academic freedom, not freedom of speech, is the bedrock principle of universities and colleges.
It has become common for “my” side to decry safe spaces, sometimes because we want to mock the inability of “snowflakes” to deal with even mild dissent and sometimes for more principled “freedom of speech” reasons. The left-liberal commentator Van Jones used a combination of these two arguments, but his view is closer to the “snowflakes” critique.
I’ve got tough talk for my liberal colleagues at universities. There are two ideas about safe spaces. One is a very good idea, and one is a terrible idea. The idea of being physically safe, not being subject to violent threats and abuse, or being targeted personally for racial epithets… that’s fine.
But there’s another view, that is now ascendant, which I think is just a horrible view. And that is that I need to be “safe” ideologically. And emotionally. I just need to feel “good” all the time.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
How can any educator type the word “wokeness”?
How does one balance madness and madness . . . ?
Of course, the group would need to have the ability and legal right to use the space and exclude “others,” but often this would involve nothing more than the ability to reserve a public space that has a door that shuts.”
That is a basic First Amendment right. Right of free assembly and association means that you have the right to assemble with those that you choose/not assemble with those you want to exclude.
That is not what safe spaces is about. They want to permanently ban certain expressions. And they want a blanket of uncertainty about what is permitted/banned to characterize public spaces.
I appreciate that the author is trying to morph the rhetoric of the other side, though.
“Balance”? There IS NO “balance.”
It’s like trying to find the balance between freedom and communism.
“the group would need to have the ability and legal right to use the space and exclude ‘others’”
Since such a space might have houses on it, the idea will not be allowed to be implemented for the precedent it would set.
“being targeted personally for racial epithets…”
Use the blank-word at Woke U and bye-bye you.
“Academic freedom” went out with pet rocks, leisure suits and Barry Manilow.
Any professor in line for tenure but is found to be conservative is removed. The rest are all the wokest of the woke. Journalism, education, law....
There is only physical safety.
All this psychological, feelings, perceptions, opinion, soft mushy bullshit is nonsense. It just ends up restricting free speech, opposing ideas to whatever is accepted at the time...
You make me feel insecure because you... Fill in the blank with whatever you want.
Your feelings don’t get a safe space, nor should they. All it turns into is one group that is advocating whatever the prevailing views are, rubbing their ideas into someone else’s face, that has differing views. Then the group that feels more virtuous hides in a safe space if someone dares have a different view and shoots them down, even if done tactfully, polite and using rational arguments. The emotional safe space is a weapon. It’s used to silence people with differing views. It is to free speech what EEO and all this racial/sexual harassment accusations are in the workplace (>90% shown to be false accusations).
People need to learn to have thick skin. It’s not everyone else’s problem if you’re a snowflake with strong feelings about things but feel really bad if someone says something about your ideas and you can’t defend them.
“the inability of ‘snowflakes’ to deal with even mild dissent”
College should be where people learn to improve their thinking and presentation skills.
There is no balance and “Wokeness” isn’t a word.
The left is going to keep pushing until the USA is destroyed and we are ruled by a World Gov.
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