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

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.

http://www.mississippilawyer-blog.com/Yelling.jpg

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

Hungry for gotchas, this one.

http://buzzsouthafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/microrganisom1.gif

Why on earth are you resistant to saying that the journalist is lying? You're saying he wrote something that wasn't true (or asserts something that isn't supported the quotes, I'm sure you can tell me why that's an important difference) but when I ask if he's lying you become incredibly defensive?

But just to return to what the discussion was actually about, until you decided to derail it, here's the full part of the text that deals with 'freedom of expression'. Honestly, I think it seems quite clear that the professor is concerned.

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.

“‘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.”

The strong emotions, high sensitivity, and overwhelming desire for immediate administrative changes in regards to the treatment of “historically underrepresented groups” appears to override freedom of expression and open dialogue on campus.

Concerns about freedom of speech on Brown’s campus also came up when I interviewed students about the controversial Columbus Day op-ed.
“I think freedom of speech in general has a lot of problems because of power dynamics, just racially and otherwise, so you have to be cautious,” sophomore Sierra Edd said.

The professor says his concerns about freedom of expression at Brown went back further than this fall.

In October 2013, Brown University students effectively prevented then-New York City police chief Ray Kelly from speaking after he had been explicitly invited to be part of a lecture series organized by Brown’s Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions.
“I knew people were organizing to protest, and I was all for that,” the professor said. “The idea that people were outside picketing, I thought, ‘Great! This is America. Picket. Let him know people here don’t like him, don’t like his views.’ No one objected to the picketing.”

Instead, student protesters booed and shouted to the point Kelly could not proceed with his speech.

“After about a half-hour of attempts to continue the lecture, administrators decided to cancel the event,” the Brown Daily Herald reported at the time.
“There are ways to protest a person without shutting down their speech,” the professor said. While he was disappointed in the students, he was alarmed that more professors weren’t upset.

Some faculty “thought it was absolutely appropriate and acceptable that his ability to express his views as an invited speaker, that shutting that down, was OK,” the professor said. “In my whole time here that was the first time faculty endorsed a view that does restrict free expression.”

I am resistant to saying that the journalist is lying because that would be silly. That are many ways to be wrong without lying: see, for example, yourself.

It would be wrong to say that the professor is not concerned at all about freedom of expression; but I think you are conflating the journalist's clear point of view in this piece with the professor's, as I think the journalist has done. I think the professor is very concerned about changes in student culture that are detrimental to the possibility of the open exchange of ideas; to call that "talking a lot about freedom of speech" makes it easy to dismiss with a hand wave, as your initial post seemed intended to do. You can be really very uncomfortable about the culture of shutting down without being against the protestors or their protests -- the assertions of protestors that this is not so to the contrary.

https://31.media.tumblr.com/cd4851c57accb3c9733efc5009014f49/tumblr_inline_njz6ipAWMo1r96r7k.gif

Yeah, I'm with Scott here, TWU. You really get butthurt over semantics.

Who's hurt?

i'm actually not paying too much attention. i got a little confused with the back and forth! carry on though. i'm watching a trump rally on youtube. oof!

That's ok. I was watching last nights Fargo. Probably that's why I think everyone is hurt.

(It's also kind of hard to pretend to be on the side of righteousness and use that awful word "butthurt", btw. A friendly tip.)

to call that "talking a lot about freedom of speech"

To be fair, this is what Frederik wrote: "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?'

x-post: Yeah, I thought about that afterwards, that it might have bad connections. I thought it was just something you said to assholes.

x-post: correction noted, but this isn't really a semantic point: the journalist went out to get "FREEDOM OF SPEECH" quotes from a professor for a "PC GONE MAD" article, and didn't really get one. The professor isn't harping on individual rights being trampled on in a way that makes it easy to boil down to "my speech is more equal than yours", but is talking about a student movement that apparently, in some circumstances, does not seek interaction or any kind of exchange -- whether the professor is right or wrong, that is a different question than the "shut up and let the white grownups speak" that a lot of articles on this subject have boiled down to.