Northwestern Professor: Faculty Now Fear Students Demanding ‘Safe Spaces’

Big Government ^ | 5/29/15 | John Sexton

[markomalley]

A Northwestern University professor was accused of retaliation and investigated after students claimed an article she had written had a “chilling effect” on students’s ability to report sexual misconduct.

Writing on Friday in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Laura Kipnis describes an academic climate in which professors lay awake at night in fear of losing their careers over a single careless word or missed trigger warning. A new academic culture is rising in which hurt feelings are considered evidence of an attack. This hypersensitivity is being abetted by an expanding process of Title IX charges which allow anyone with an agenda or a grudge to go on the offensive against the faculty:

As I understand it, any Title IX charge that’s filed has to be investigated, which effectively empowers anyone on campus to individually decide, and expand, what Title IX covers. Anyone with a grudge, a political agenda, or a desire for attention can quite easily leverage the system.

And there are a lot of grudges these days. The reality is that the more colleges devote themselves to creating “safe spaces” — that new watchword — for students, the more dangerous those campuses become for professors. It’s astounding how aggressive students’ assertions of vulnerability have gotten in the past few years. Emotional discomfort is regarded as equivalent to material injury, and all injuries have to be remediated.

[Wyrd bið ful aræd]

The academics were instrumental in creating this environment, so if it bites them in their collective arse, Reign of Terror style, they have themselves to blame.

[Wyrd bið ful aræd]

The odds of that happening are fairly low, because it would require conservative students to take a page out of the liberal playbook. Conservatives view college as an investment, and go to get the scrap of paper that increases their earning potential. Liberals go to college to get drunk, catch an STD or two, protest, agitate, get a degree in wymyns studies, and “empower” themselves through self-parodying social disruption.

[jmacusa]

Yes, they did. The Nazis had their Horst Wesel, the Reds had their Pavel Morozov and the Chinese still have their Red Guard. Here we have the Democrat Party.

[jmacusa]

Christ Almighty this was no joke. They were really serious with this smug little faggot.

[shibumi]

So who’s joking?

I just put a face on the “smug little faggot.”

[jmacusa]

No, I meant the Obama Administration, not you. Sorry. I should have fleshed out my post a little more.

[tanknetter]

Politicians come and go. The bureaucrats are there forever.

There was a good piece in the New York Times about how the big reason college/university costs have skyrocketed is the growth of the administrative bureaucracy.

Bureaucrats generally want something to do. You either feed them, or they go scavenging.

I have to wonder whether Conservative students could run a variation of Cloward-Piven on campuses using these Title IX charges. Overload the system with charges that by law MUST be investigated.

[shibumi]

We’re cool.

(Not so sure about the rest of the world.)

[tanknetter]

The professors have been creating little monster SJWs for years and now the little monster SJWs are coming to eat them?

Not specifically directed towards you, but speaking generally we need to STOP using the term "SJW" ... the little Progressive Fascists are actually adopting it as their own and a badge of pride.

John Ringo (noted Conservative Science Fiction author) has suggested using "SJB" for Social Justice BULLIES. Call them out for what they really are.