“Civility and mutual respect are vital to all of us, and freedom of expression does not mean the freedom to harass or threaten others”, he continues.
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A letter from the University of Chicago to incoming freshman has drawn plenty of attention for its refusal to allow “safe places” or “trigger warnings” on its campus. The debate over safe spaces, too, has become cartoonized, a shorthand way to complain about privileged millennials, because the big, hard, knotty discussion about institutionalized racism on campus, about freedom of expression versus sensitivity to discrimination and injustice, takes too long and can’t be expressed in 140 characters. For instance, Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio provided counseling and designated safe spaces for students offended by the events of last month’s Republican National Convention.
A prestigious university in the U.S. has warned its future students that it doesn’t condone the creation of safe spaces, trigger warnings or the cancellation of controversial guest speakers – and it’s created a pretty sizeable Twitterstorm because of it.
Public DomainMany universities are caving to fragile students’ demands for emotional protection from offensive speech.
The letter included a link to a university report issued by a committee established in 2015 to articulate the university’s policy on freedom of expression.
The University of Chicago is consistently ranked one of the top universities in the world, and also one of the most selective. “Universities should be expected to provide the conditions within which hard thought, and therefore strong disagreement, independent judgment, and the questioning of stubborn assumptions, can flourish in an environment of the greatest freedom”.
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In the letter, Dean of Students Jay Ellison said members of the university’s community were encouraged to speak, write, listen, challenge and learn without fear of censorship. A May visit by conservative journalist Milo Yiannopoulos descended into chaos after it was disrupted by student activists and school security refused to restore order.
