The Coddling Of The American Mind (Trigger Warning Article In The Atlantic...)

what then? what speech is currently legal that he believes we should make illegal and why should i be in favor of curtailing any more speech than we already do?

No one has actually raised "making illegal" any speech afaik

another thing about that qutoe. i don't see much discussion about what the enlightenment's values are, or why they would matter. it seems like something strictly for academics, as they probably are the only ones who decide the current course of 'the enlightenment project' anyway

i guess the way you're reading that sentence is that enlightenment principles undergird the law that upholds free speech as well as a kind of separate ethics of speech and while offensive speech violates the latter the author doesn't necessarily mean it should alter the former? bc that seems like a problematic distinction in that if free speech laws are an ethics issue, and you're undermining those ethics, you're just going to end up with a question of why this is legal anyway.

i don't see much discussion about what the enlightenment's values are, or why they would matter.

see this entire thread and the other one!

is that what's going on here?

well it's not Kant and Foucault but...

ryan do u think of foucault as particularly embedded in an enlightenment values discourse?

i thought this thread was about Atlantic articles on trigger warnings

Mordy: his essay "What is Enlightenment?" (a response to Kant's of the same title) is becoming a pretty standard text. It's well worth reading.

^will check out

i thought this thread was about Atlantic articles on trigger warnings

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau)

it's about...the AMERICAN MIND

i think ryan is right that the subtext of both these threads is the question of what exactly constitutes the value of free speech and how/if it should be limited in what circumstances. if we were mostly european and not american we'd probably be discussing holocaust denial laws too.

i guess i just thought the enlightenment was about a lot more than that, but maybe i need to shut up and educate myself a little more

i still say it's mostly a question for academics, as they are probably the one's who will ultimately be deciding the course

LOL - http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/11/11/raise-voting-age-25-yale-missouri-protests-political-debate-column/75577468/

conservatives are flipping out about that cobb quote for the wrong reason. he's trying to say that enlightenment values don't countenance bigotry, which, lol

free speeeeech

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/11/11/missouri-senator-aims-to-block-students-dissertation-on-abortion.html

As a reminder, this started because Yale administrators merely ADVISED students not to wear offensive costumes -- no ban or censorship was at issue. In response, it was a white adviser who complained "American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition." IMO it sounds like it's the white kids who are coddled.

this started because after the white adviser wrote her response email (which contains afaict zero bigotry) some students accused her and her husband of making them feel unsafe

maybe upper class whites are just more tuned into passive aggression. like, "we ask that you please consider..." basically means "FUCKING DON'T" in a lot of contexts, institutions, families...

accused

isn't this a form of speech? speech that must be free to be expressed?

i mean free speech gives the political right the ability to organize a broad anti-educational campaign that stretches from presidential debates to the article you read in the airplane on the way to said debate

yes - has anyone here said that they shouldn't be allowed to express themselves? by contrast, the students who complained have said that she should be fired for expressing herself. i defend people's right to illiberal opinions but we also get to say that they are wrong about how we want to organize our society.

school: please don't be racist this halloween, we don't need this shit
house master, responsible for student life: ohhh can't we be? just a little? for fun, like in the old days?

just in case it's not clear - i am not calling for any consequences of any sort for the students who yelled in that video and the advisor's husband or who called for them to be fired. i just think they're morons.

goole, do u think that you are accurately representing her email or maybe not so much?

this is all people objecting to things other people are saying about things that may or may not be true. its meaningless idle bullshit. as an American i support the right of them to print it but i can call it out and support the right of others to call it out. thats what free speech is.

should the woman be fired for writing her email? i come down on 'no.' it's meaningless to me but probably not to her.

if anyone is being coddled it is writers who spend their days pontificating maybe indulging in some sad nostalgia for their youth but now they are wise and have read theory so thats the knife they use for their self pain pleasure

i dont know its not our place to say who should be fired and not. its not a bloggers or an articles place either. its up to the people they work with.

i think you can give a judgement of personal opinion - do you think she should be fired due to her email or not?

sorry dont mean to derail but i was feeling El Tomboto earlier

personal opinion i dont really care. i dont know enough about the situation. i am not involved in their school. i dont live in Missouri or Massachusetts. i haven't been to a university in 7 years.

exactly who are you refering to being fired? there are a bunch of these stories flying around now hard to keep track

the woman who wrote the email regarding the halloween costume.

i dont think people should be fired for what they say in private. but at work anything kinda goes. hasnt that always been the case?

i am not in favor of firing by pressure from groups outside the workforce. but this happens as well. its not a new phenomenon, it goes hand in hand w nepotism, which is ages old.

i think there's a very simple question you could answer about whether she should lose her job based on sending that email and possibly you wouldn't actually want to answer that question bc if you conclude that she shouldn't, you might also have to conclude that the students demanding she lose her job are being unreasonable, which is ultimately what these stories keep coming down to - are these students making legitimate claims or not.

freedom of speech also means not having to have an opinion on this matter.

has the actual original email been published? i cant seem to find it. only something about somebody who was upset about the email.

i need to see the email to make an informed opinion. otherwise i am going off heresay and he said she said.

https://www.thefire.org/email-from-erika-christakis-dressing-yourselves-email-to-silliman-college-yale-students-on-halloween-costumes/

demanding an apology for an email sounds ridiculous but whatever. maybe they miss the PTA

would it have been too much trouble to crumple it up and throw it in the bin? would that make one less a hero for free speech?

I don’t wish to trivialize genuine concerns about cultural and personal representation, and other challenges to our lived experience in a plural community. I know that many decent people have proposed guidelines on Halloween costumes from a spirit of avoiding hurt and offense. I laud those goals, in theory, as most of us do. But in practice, I wonder if we should reflect more transparently, as a community, on the consequences of an institutional (which is to say: bureaucratic and administrative) exercise of implied control over college students.

she sounds like a monster

how is she not entitled to her opinion there? isnt that what free speech is all about?

she isnt writing legislation here. shes a policy writer. her job is to have an opinion on this stuff.

what a monster, asking us to reflect

well i mean i'm obv defending her right to her opinion there. i don't think she should lose her job for writing that email and i think the people who are demanding that she does lose her job are wrong.

yeah they need to get over themselves. she doesnt have the power to fire them. why should they have the power to fire here. that isnt speech.

but i dont know there could be local politics involved. certainly there are school politics nobody will know outside of Yale impacting this.

sounds messy.

"dont be offended about stuff"
"dont tell me what to do, that offends me"