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

That's the fear alright

Good protest

https://youtu.be/HKVTE9Vj5uA

This thread has wandered into my wheelhouse. I'm a HS civics teacher and I sponsor an after school LGBT+ student group. A lot of the students in the group are definitely using Twitter and tumblr to learn about social justice issues more broadly which I think is pretty important to be able to connect with other people like themselves about their experiences.

The handwringing in the article linked above...like I get that academic cultures in these rarefied private school environments skew a particular way, but the idea that this is part of some wider trend which threatens free speech and social justice warriors are running amok, it's a bit precious to me. The vast majority of K-12 spaces are still very traditional, and students are tacitly expected to endure racism, sexist, homophobia, transportation, etc as part of the background of their day to day lives.

Ugh, should say transphobia but autocorrect

I was reading Far from the Tree by Andrew Solomon again and this seems to fit here:

http://s18.postimg.org/vn8t5u761/far_from_the_tree.jpg

Meaning if schools, colleges, whatever, are undergoing this conflict between speech and identity and the status quo, it's because our society at large undergoing that struggle.

Destroy someone's self-esteem enough, and every punch feels like punching up.

He punched up at me; it felt like a kiss

'punch up' most #1 confusing term of our era imo

i say as one who has read way too many interviews with people hired to 'punch up' screenplays

(btw amateurist your apology is much appreciated. despite the friction our conversations usually turn out interesting and ultimately enjoyable.)

Dear Members of the Harvard Law School Community,

I write to update you about the community meeting to be held next Monday, November 30, from noon until 1:00, in Milstein East. Last week, as you know, in these halls where we learn and work and live our lives together, some person or persons defaced the portraits of our African-American faculty members -- cherished colleagues and beloved teachers, pillars of this Law School. I am saddened and outraged by this act. The Harvard University Police Department is investigating this act of vandalism as a hate crime, and today you received an email from the HUPD asking for all of us to assist in its investigation. I thank you all for your cooperation.

This event again reminds us that Harvard Law School is not immune from problems of racism that all institutions must confront. As an institution of higher learning, we have special obligations to provide and protect a fair and inclusive educational community. As a law school, we must strive, and help our students strive, for justice. Harvard Law School is a place to pursue our highest ideals of justice; to seek truth by subjecting ideas and assumptions to rigorous scrutiny, debate, and disagreement; to send into the world lawyers who are better and more effective because they have encountered diverse perspectives, approaches, and ideas -- and have dared to think differently. For us to achieve these aspirations, all members of our community must feel safe and included. We must be able to disagree, sometimes vigorously, but always with mutual respect. We must feel able to have difficult conversations. We must, as last week's moderators so beautifully said, encounter our differences with compassion and curiosity.

On Monday, together with senior members of the staff and faculty, I will discuss with the Harvard Law School community concrete efforts that we have been making, and will pursue, to help Harvard Law School realize these aspirations. We will discuss ways in which students, staff, and faculty can participate in helping to make Harvard Law School ever better in the pursuit of our shared ideals:
Under the leadership of our new Dean of Students Marcia Sells, we will continue work begun last summer to use Orientation and our 1L Sections as places where we learn better how to have difficult conversations and tackle sensitive issues openly but with mutual respect. I have also asked some faculty members to intensify discussions about how to foster such conversations in an environment of curiosity, compassion, and mutual respect. We have consulted -- and invite further consultation -- with students and student organizations about this process. In addition, under Dean Sells' leadership, we will develop a more formal institutional framework for diversity and inclusion, with new resources.

Through the work of the appointments committees chaired by Professors Ken Mack, Dan Nagin, and Ben Sachs, we will continue to work hard and consciously to improve the diversity of this faculty on all dimensions. This has long been a priority of this Law School and of my deanship, and we intend to continue to make it a priority to have a diverse faculty and a rich program of offerings that enable all of our students to pursue what they feel passionate about and what has inspired them to enter our profession. In the past five years, we have been honored and delighted to have many new colleagues who reflect our commitment to excellence and diversities of all kinds. But our work is far from done. We have, in the past, received excellent input from individual students and student organizations, and we invite and look forward to further collaboration on these matters.

A key element of our community is our staff. I have appointed a new Assistant Dean and Chief Human Resources Officer, Kevin Moody. Dean Moody and I are committed to finding ways to ensure that every member of the staff feels included and valued in our shared enterprise.

I have appointed Professor Bruce Mann to chair a committee that will lead research into, and a community discussion, of whether to continue using the HLS shield. This committee will be composed of faculty, staff, and students and it will begin its work immediately. Please share your thoughts with the committee at roy✧✧✧@l✧✧.harv✧✧✧.e✧✧.
Any great institution is always a work in progress. Ours certainly is. In the almost 35 years I have been here, the institution has improved along many dimensions -- the breadth, range, and collegiality of intellectual inquiry; the diversity of the students, staff, and faculty; the commitment to pro bono service through an exponential growth in clinics, student practice organizations, and every student's commitment to pro bono work; and, frankly, a more conscious focus upon the happiness and well-being of our students and our community as a whole. But there is room for improvement, and we certainly feel that urgency today. On Monday, we will continue the work of improving Harvard Law School and making it a place where all feel included and can thrive in the important work that lies ahead, not just here but in all the worlds this school opens up to members of our community.

This is a season to give thanks, and although we face challenges, there remain many grounds for gratitude. I am grateful for the strength, good will, and caring of this community, which is bound together by a mission to serve others and advance justice through law. I am thankful that we have the chance to serve others through clinics and student and faculty advocacy, and other work of the School in local, national, and global communities, and I admire and thank all who contribute to these efforts.

I look forward to continuing our work when we come together again next Monday.

I wish you all the blessings of happiness, peace, and renewal during this Thanksgiving holiday. Together, with the energy, vision, skills, and commitments of the students, staff, and faculty of Harvard Law School, we can do so much to make our community and our world better.

Warmest regards,
Martha

(sent to me and, I assume, all alumni after the fact with a very nice "Dear Alum" letter -- no idea how the meeting went.)

I've been hearing about all of this through my wife's contacts at the school; the administrative staff response has been almost a complete 180-degree turn since the turnover in the head of HR (for the better).

I found this article about the continuing unfolding of events at Yale interesting, because it's the first time I've seen the full text of Erika Christakis's email to students.

Myself I kind of align with everything she says in that email even though it's a chatty email/thinkpiece type of writing and is not very rigorous

Even if we could agree on how to avoid offense – and I’ll note that no one around campus seems overly concerned about the offense taken by religiously conservative folks to skin-revealing costumes – I wonder, and I am not trying to be provocative: Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious… a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive?

I mean her mistake here was to employ the word 'offensive'.

By 'offensive' she means 'something that offends someone (an individual)'.

A lot of other people take the term 'offensive' to mean 'something that is the final straw (of racism etc against a group of people who are fed up of it) that breaks the donkey's back'.

It's all about miscommunication and it's all very sad

And I think her point about the sexy costumes also holds up, although it looks throwaway on first glance.

If 'white American in sombrero' = this campus is no longer a safe space for Mexicans (or any other minority) because of the awful cultural appropriation going on, then surely 'woman with prosthetic slash across the throat and strategically torn prom dress costume covered in blood' would = this campus is no longer a safe space for anyone who has been sexually assaulted. The 'Mexican costume' links to actual American/Mexican border violence exactly as much as the 'sexy murder victim' costume relates to actual sex crimes.

Even take away the sexy violence angle (maybe this is just a British halloween thing?) and you're still left with (the majority of) people wearing 'sexy' costumes which are definitely not in line with 'sex positivity' or 'body positivity'; you're still left with halloween as a festival wherein those who are comfortable with their sexuality get to strut it, and where those who are less so are 'spotlighted' by contrast. And inevitably those who are less comfortable strutting their sexuality are going to be those who are outside the cultural norms of beauty.

This is before we get on to what the phenomena of lots of people walking around in revealing costumes 'says to' people from more conservative religious backgrounds, whether traditionally American or, for example, Indian. It could be argued that it's basically a massive 'fuck off' to such people.

I'm not aware of anyone militating against it though, in the same way people do against sombreros and chinese fans being carried around by white people

^ Not that any of that is meant to 'end' the discussion about racism (in which at some point yes, we really are going to have to talk abt sombreros and no, I wouldn't black up to go to a party and would also not wear a sombrero if I thought the significance of that was on the same level)

This is what’s so odd about the language of coddling and hypersensitivity. If students are really so fragile, if they’re really hiding from scary ideas in a thoughtless cocoon of political correctness, why are they so often to be found out on the campus, demonstrating, protesting, petitioning and organising? That’s not what hiding looks like. It’s not what coddling looks like. In fact, the people showing greatest signs of coddling are those professors for whom the classroom has been a safe space for way too long. Now they’re apparently afraid that their “small or accidental slights”, as Lukianoff and Haidt put it, are going to get pounced on. They’d much rather students “question their own emotional reactions” than question the assumptions coming from the front of the classroom.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/todays-students-are-anything-but-coddled

I agree. The coddling language is dumb. Censorship is a symptom of a polity that feels strong enough to repress opposing view points, not one that is afraid of being offended.

"question the assumptions coming from the front of the classroom" is not the same thing as demanding someone be silence or fired.

*silenced

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/12/06/brown-university-professor-denounces-mccarthy-witch-hunts.html

yeah i kno daily beast

Also a morality based on the emotional lives of pre-25-year-olds sounds like hell.

http://chronicle.com/article/Not-a-Day-Care-Really-/234428

Ha just heard Molly Lambert on a show about the Yoga class/appropriation controversy say "if a couple of people say we find this offensive then the class should be shut down"

We're a long way from the days of Fuck the PMRC

THE FORBIDDEN DANCE

Let’s take a look at the student handbook to find out. If you’re a 22-year-old student who enjoys dancing, are you allowed to dance? Maybe, but to avoid any censure, you should make sure it’s ballroom dancing. The 2015-16 handbook states that "patronizing dance clubs" is considered a minor violation of school policy. Why? Because of the "illicit sexual dancing" that happens there, as the handbook so eloquently puts it. In addition to that 19th-century tent-revival-era rule, note the additional implication: The university wants to know what you’re doing off campus as well as on.

where is that from?

Ha just heard Molly Lambert on a show about the Yoga class/appropriation controversy say "if a couple of people say we find this offensive then the class should be shut down"

We're a long way from the days of Fuck the PMRC

the thing is, it's only possible to take offense if you know almost nothing about the history and practice of yoga

xp it's from sterls link

http://www.vox.com/2015/12/7/9849382/black-at-princeton

I stopped sleeping in my dorm room, bouncing from room to room of my friends' dorms, feeling that if Public Safety couldn't find me, then they couldn't kick me out of school.

: (

Nothing quite like that happened to me at Harvard but I know several ppl who had just as fucked up interactions with the institution.

I found this article about the continuing unfolding of events at Yale interesting, because it's the first time I've seen the full text of Erika Christakis's email to students.

i don't get why quit the teaching but keep the RA job

spite?

hahaha

teaching can be a real pain in the ass, maybe this RA gig is pretty sweet

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/12/06/brown-university-professor-denounces-mccarthy-witch-hunts.html

yeah i kno daily beast

― j., Monday, December 7, 2015 6:57 AM (Yesterday)

The school chose to arm the campus police at some point while I was there -- mid 90s. I think there was some sort of "student vote," though it wasn't up to the students. A lot of the arguments students are making now vis a vis racial profiling were the same arguments people made 20 years ago when arguing against arming campus police. I hadn't had particularly "positive" experiences with cops growing up and the campus area seemed very safe to me, so I felt like the students who wanted the campus cops to have guns wanted to "be coddled"

That Brown piece, how can a professor talk so much about the importance of 'freedom of expression', but then half his criticisms are 'they are shouting! making too much noise! why is she crying?'

That's an easy one: he doesn't talk about it so much. The journalist raises the phrase, the professor says he isn't happy with it, then he uses the phrase to get to his idea. Your gotcha is denied.

So you're saying the journalist is lying?

No. I am saying re-read the article more carefully, starting from the point where the phrase "freedom of speech" comes in.

"More disconcerting than the nature and tone of recent protests to this professor is the lack of concern over freedom of speech—or what he referred to as “freedom of expression”—on campus."

Yes, clearly FoS or FoE isn't important to the professor... 'More disconcerting' means 'doesn't talk about it much'...

I don't get at all what you're trying to say?

Here:

“‘Freedom of speech’ is a little tough,” he said. ”It’s not the perfect phrase to use, partly because we’re a private institution and we’re not talking about government action. I like to use ‘freedom of expression.’ Universities are supposed to be places of freedom of expression.”

Pretty easy to infer who brought up the phrase given the focus of the article, and that the specific, differentiated complaints of the anonymous professor can't reasonably be simplified into "THEM KIDS IS TAKIN' MY FREEDOMS OF SPEECH!!"

x-post: you just quoted the journalist, dum-dum.

Um, yes? But, if you read the quote veeeeeery carefully, you'll see that the journalist uses the words 'this professor', which - and sure, this is an assumption - probably refers to the professor he is interviewing. Whom he is saying is concerned with the lack of concern over freedom of expression.

I still don't get you at all. But congrats on getting to call someone a dum-dum.

You are correct; you aren't getting my point at all. The journalist asserts that the professor is most concerned about freedom of speech on campus. The direct quotes from the professor do not support this assertion, and the only direct quote from the professor that discussion freedom of speech expresses discomfort with the phrase and tries to finesse it. It is, I think, less of a stretch to infer that the professor only mentioned the phrase "freedom of speech" because the journalist asked him about it than to say this professor talks about it "so much".
(Sling the casual sarcasm and I'll sling a dum-dum at you every time. Low stakes.)

So you ARE saying that the journalist is lying? Then why didn't you say so?

Yes. I am saying the journalist is lying. There is only the absolute objective truth, and any deviation from absolute objective truth for any reason is a lie.

Dum-dum.