Last week, a Duke University student made national news for refusing to read an assigned summer book, the graphic novel Fun Home, saying its theme of gay sexuality and risque illustrations may compromise his moral beliefs. This stance is the latest in what has been a stream of conflicts about political correctness at American universities. This debate hinges upon the right of students to be protected from potentially offensive or distressing ideas. Articles often reference the increasing use of “trigger warnings” — a phrase posted at the top of a syllabus or blog or other text to warn people about a potentially distressing topic — and a new emphasis on campus “safe spaces.” The discussion raises a significant issue of whether the motivation to shield students from potential offense can be harmful to the intellectual environments that colleges hope to create.
In our zealousness to enforce a policy of shielding students, we neglect to consider that perhaps protecting them from ideas that offend them or make them uncomfortable is not in their best interest or that of the university.
This past spring, I attended a new member education meeting for members of Brown’s fraternities and sororities on alcohol and hazing. I remember little of the talk, except for a moment near the end when a student angrily chastised the speaker for his use of a heteronormative example. I recall that watching the speaker hastily bluster out a defensive apology, I felt sorry for him. It was clear from my perspective, and from the perspective of others with whom I discussed the incident later, that the offense with which he had been charged was an unintentional one.
A few weeks later, I received an email indicating that the speaker would not be asked back next year, due in part to his use of heteronormative examples. In the email, an administrator apologized to anyone whom the speaker “made … uncomfortable or feel attacked.” Now there may be something else about the speech that offended, something that I missed, but remembering the look on the speaker’s face after his blunder, the word “attack” seemed out of place.
This highlights what I see as a problem with the recent crackdown on potentially offensive statements. An often all too aggressive, zero-tolerance attitude toward even accidental offenses replaces discussion and argumentation with a crusade-like effort to stomp out the opposition rather than educate it. It is important to distinguish between bigotry and ignorance and to understand that disagreement does not mean bigotry either.
This idea extends to texts or discussion in a classroom. A professor who assigns a racist book is not racist, and a politically incorrect text can nonetheless be an important one. As Professor of Comparative Literature Arnold Weinstein — the author of a New York Times article, “Closed Minds, Great Books,” on the subject — wrote to me in an email for this column, “I do try to remain sensitive to what offends in the materials I assign. … But novels are not treatises, and they are meant to display issues rather than resolve or adjudicate them." Novels that display racial or sexual discrimination do not work to advocate these views but rather teach us to reflect on the conditions that created them, and we must not silence the lessons of the past because they unnerve us today.
What I essentially see in this trend is good motives and well-intentioned activism being employed counterproductively. This article in no way aims to discredit the motives behind the recent effort to eliminate offensive words and ideas, or to overblow the effect that it has on American education. But disallowing discomfiting viewpoints is and always will be contrary to the intellectual and moral development of individuals, and it is often only in contact with opposition that our ideas and values truly take shape. Dealing with the existence and expression of conflicting opinions is one of life’s greatest challenges, and to shield oneself from the task of dealing with such opinions is to ignore the context in which real-life decisions are and must be made. Fostering intellectual environments and protecting the psychological well-being of marginalized groups are not mutually exclusive, and there is no reason to believe that the two could not coexist. Thus far, universities and students have been asking the right questions but reaching the wrong conclusions. It’s easier to fire a speaker than deal with the root of the issue, and if you seek to effect change, you cannot face those who oppose you with the same close-mindedness you are so quick to accuse them of.
Nicholas Esemplare ’18 is an English and economics double concentrator.
