The Atlantic

If I have a particularly negative experience with an employee of a store, I should not be told their manager that by vocalizing my negative shopping experience that I am violating his right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Similarly, if I repeatedly call the attention of university administration to troubling practices or prevailing attitudes that impede my access to a positive academic experience, I should not be met with a dismissive “Well you need to stop censoring Johnny’s right to freedom of speech…”

It is disappointing at the least, that university administrators and faculty members must cite freedom of speech to qualify the behavior of insensitive students and faculty. Here’s a particularly poignant quote from xkcd:

I can’t remember where I heard this, but someone once said that defending a position by citing free speech is sort of the ultimate concession; you’re saying that the most compelling thing you can say for your position is that it’s not literally illegal to express.

Yes, the behaviors or attitudes held by students, professors, or faculty are not literally illegal to express. That being said, that is not the end of the discussion and should not be the extent a university administration’s responsibility to protect students of color or create a culture that is more conducive to equality.

Those of the older generations view the recent student protests as a part of some larger attempt to censor free speech, or impose a sectarian view on administrators that are simply trying to do their job. They have woefully missed the point. These new student activists are exercising their freedom of speech, previous conditions that their older counterparts deemed fair and just have been held up to the light; unfortunately they no longer suffice.

As a university, you can no longer actively recruit people of color to attend your university, while bragging about it to shareholders, while shirking the responsibilities that come with treating those students as members of the community. If you misunderstand the cultures of your students of color, learn, and if you lack the resources to support these students, acquire.

To join the debate, email hello@theatlantic.com as always.

For details related to the video embedded above, see this writeup from Emily Shire on the most recent flashpoint in the campus protests: Brown University students dissatisfied with a new $100 million initiative from the administration intended to “doubl[e] the number of faculty and graduate students from ‘historically underrepresented groups’ (which effectively means ethnic, racial, and sexual minorities) by the 2024-2025 academic year and establishing ‘professional development workshops on race, sexual orientation and gender identity.’” The video shows student activists confronting Brown’s president, Christina H. Paxson.

But I mostly bring up Shire’s piece because it addresses the use of the term “free speech” that our reader rightly scrutinizes. Here’s Shire quoting a Brown professor:

“‘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.

Update from a reader who responds to the one at George Washington University:

I was disappointed to see your reader discussing the issue of free speech on college campuses where, in the same breath that she describes how she is not trying to curtail other people’s freedom of speech, she goes on to describe how she is trying to curtail other people’s freedom of speech. Here is a salient quote:

Similarly, if I repeatedly call the attention of university administration to troubling practices or prevailing attitudes that impede my access to a positive academic experience, I should not be met with a dismissive “Well you need to stop censoring Johnny’s right to freedom of speech…”

Yes, we should all strive to treat each other with dignity and respect and create communities where all parties feel welcome. However, the reader unfortunately misses the point: that it is largely the responsibility of the student to create their own positive academic experience.

Short of incitement to violence, there is nothing Johnny can say that infringes upon your reader’s right to a positive academic experience. If Johnny is saying something you don’t like, you have every right to either fight back with your own ideas or ignore them. This is why hate speech is protected speech in the United States. Everyone has the right to show sympathy for the KKK, deny the Holocaust, or go on similarly racist diatribes—and in doing so, destroy their reputation as a credible interlocutor.

Another quote from your reader:

Yes, the behaviors or attitudes held by students, professors, or faculty are not literally illegal to express. That being said, that is not the end of the discussion and should not be the extent a university administration’s responsibility to protect students of color or create a culture that is more conducive to equality.

What laws are there that universities are not upholding that would otherwise protect students of color and create equality between the students? This woefully vague criticism seems to be hinting at doing that which your first emailer claimed student activists are not trying to do.

I have been following this situation closely and what I’ve seen is university faculty attempting to silence media for the sake of a safe space, students silencing each other for saying that each person should be judged on the content of their character, and students who demand the removal of prestigious faculty over the horrors of seeing a transgressive Halloween costume.

Frankly, these students’ demands for safe spaces, for politically correct language, for their ideas to go unchallenged, and for the draconian punishment of those that cross the line are deeply worrying to those of us who are living in the real world. One of the main functions of universities now is to prepare students to enter the work force, where it’s the final product that matters the most instead of the feelings of the person who produced it. Sadly, I’m afraid these students are going to be in for a very bumpy ride once they exit their safe spaces.

Update from one more reader:

Your reader’s last criticism—that the students are somehow rejecting the “real world”—is really disappointing. If that is his understanding of the real world, where humans function solely as cogs in a production engine and silly, soft things like emotional health and comfort are alien or unwelcome intrusions in that system, he’s going to be in for a very bumpy ride himself.

Is his office not a safe space? Let me rephrase: Are his co-workers free to harass one another without fear of reprisal from the employers? If one co-worker wore a costume to his office that was clearly offensive to the race of another co-worker, would there be no repercussions?

The reader retorts:

Regarding the reader who apparently believes I’m some sort of office robot, I think it’s a bit uncharitable for someone to assume I’m at the polar opposite end of the spectrum just because I'm not in their position.

The troubling point in your reader’s response to me is the implication that speech or behavior in universities should be sanitized to resemble a corporate office. For those who have worked in an office, I would challenge anyone to truly say they feel more comfortable expressing themselves openly and honestly in an office than on a university campus. In my office, we talk about football, the weather, and maybe the movies. We certainly are not covering topics such as social justice and identity politics.

One thing I’ve noticed is something that Greg Lukianoff mentions in his and Jonathan Haidt’s piece, “The Coddling of the American Mind.” If we look at the hippy movement of the ‘60s and second wave feminism through the ‘80s, the focus was on a rejection of puritan values, sex positivity for women, and overall personal empowerment for young people. Now, however, the campus protests seem to focus on the opposite: Students are demanding safe spaces that protect them from discomfort and speech codes that limit other students’ right to free expression. While the feminists and hippies were demanding that the administration stop intruding into their lives because they wanted the right to make their own choices, students now are demanding that university administrations do intrude into their lives to protect the “right to not be offended.”

Amherst College activists hope to create learning spaces from such alienation. The demands of Amherst Uprising are not illiberal. They are concerned with the creation of spaces and community norms that affirm individual dignity. These Amherst College students are not in favor of perfunctorily sanctioning anyone from their community. They are simply pressing their college to create necessary structures to address instances of racial injury in a sufficient way. Debates on free speech detract from the fact such movements at Yale, Mizzou and Amherst are primarily concerned with equal justice.

Administrators are more mindful of petty drug violations than matters of racial injury. This prevents minority students from fully taking advantage of what their schools have to offer. Students merely hope to not only prevent behaviors that cause racial injury in an inclusive, restorative way for both parties, but also to create introspection within the involved parties about the factors that led to racial injury. The Amherst College administration may not be able to change an individual’s beliefs about certain issues but they can certainly create spaces for parties respectfully learn about and reflect on their behaviors.

Best,
Andrew Lindsay
Amherst College Class of 2016

I thank him for the engagement; wish him success in inculcating mutual respect and creating community norms that affirm the dignity of all students, not just members of majority groups; sympathize with students who do not feel welcome on their campus; and stand by my characterization of the original “Amherst Uprising” demands as flagrantly illiberal. Readers can see them here and judge for themselves. Amherst Uprising has subsequently engaged Amherst’s president in dialogue about alternative ways to proceed that are, in my view, less objectionable.

Outside of Europe and North America, people tend not to assume that their personal life achievements are entirely merit based. In South Asia, personal success is understood explicitly as a not only a product of individual work ethic and habits, but also other factors such as ethnicity, language, caste, gender, socio-economic class of family, family social network, geographic location etc. Working hard and being persistent only reaps rewards if you belong to the right combination of these factors (i.e. upper class, upper caste, male, fluent in English, urban). An individual who does not belonging to this right combination will almost never get the same opportunities(i.e. a slum dweller from Mumbai can work harder and more persistently than a middle class, upper-class, English speaking Mumbaite, but he/she will almost never achieve any social mobility).

The North American narrative of meritocracy is extremely problematic because it allows people in positions of power to believe that their personal and social successes are determined by a single factor, work ethics and habits, and to ignore the role that race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, socio-economic class have played in their success. This narrative also allows these individuals ignore the suffering of others by blaming any lack of success on personal moral failings, thereby removing any impetuous for social change.

Your thoughts? Drop me an email and I’ll likely post. Update from a reader:

The reader argues that “not all racialized experiences are the same” and claims that Jews and Asians “were given social privileges not provided to other groups.” The fundamental problem with this line of thinking was expressed clearly by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson:

To accept Richmond’s claim that past societal discrimination alone can serve as the basis for rigid racial preferences would be to open the door to competing claims for ‘remedial relief’ for every disadvantaged group. The dream of a Nation of equal citizens in a society where race is irrelevant to personal opportunity and achievement would be lost in a mosaic of shifting preferences based on inherently unmeasurable claims of past wrongs.

A discussion on whose ancestors were oppressed more or oppressed enough is not likely to be a productive one. Furthermore, a disproportionate amount of black students at prestigious universities that practice affirmative action are immigrants or their children. If we really want to delve into the past and measure the level of oppression our ancestors experienced in the U.S., we would have to employ the same tools that were once used to disenfranchise blacks, such as grandfather clauses. The irony is perverse.

When we are talking about state universities and community colleges, we are talking about hundreds of expandable institutions that can add on teachers and programs to accommodate your average undergrad with virtually no ill-effects. By definition, those types of universities are supposed to be inclusive. The conversation changes a lot when we start talking about elite universities, and especially so when we are talking about elite programs within them.

When we talk about admission of black students to colleges, we aren’t talking about a system that tries to keep them out anymore. On the contrary, their admission is subsidized by diversity-seeking recruiting processes and lowered standardized testing bars that encourage students of diverse backgrounds to fill as many spots as possible. And that’s a good thing, because there isn’t really an upward limit to how many students we can put into average schools. Average is easy to expand.

When we talk about elite universities, we are talking about schools that are elite primarily because they are exclusive, because their standards of admission are high. When we say proudly that someone “got into MIT” (or CalTech, Harvard, or Yale), there’s a tacit assumption that this was difficult to do. And we need that. Our top universities—especially the graduate programs at our top research universities—are the drivers of our scientific economy. This is our country’s top-end intellectual capital. It’s how we stay ahead and healthy in terms of our scientific output. There is a huge interest in keeping those programs elite and making sure that the students that are allowed in are the highest qualified and also those who, frankly, want it the most.

Is it possible that the lack of adequate diversity in these schools and programs are due to institutional bias? Sure, but the data doesn’t generally show that. The article tacitly acknowledges this by not showing us a single data point that would suggest anything otherwise. And in the absence of this data, what he’s apparently asking universities to do is to admit less qualified, un-elite students. He’s asking us to dumb down sectors of our education system that are literally defined by being the home of our very smartest students.

This reader had the most up-voted comment on the piece:

Acknowledging that by the standards every other group is judged by for admission and academic success—like standardized test scores, graduation rates, and a challenging curriculum—black students lag, the assumed solution is to change the rules of the game. This is much more comfortable that confronting the possibility that a) black students as a group do not produce as many top-shelf students no matter what resources or accommodations are made, or b) they have been failed by some combination of their parents, communities, and elementary and secondary school educators.

Instead we have the political class and media talking about discarding aptitude tests that are in practice a solid measure of intellectual firepower and softening up the curriculum so it’s easier for ill-equipped students to get to graduation at schools they have no business being at in the first place. It shows that people pushing for more inclusion really don’t think black students can navigate the same intellectual space as every other group in the country, and this condescending paternalism is a signal that all the “solutions” put forth to lift up a troubled minority group aren’t really working very well.

This commenter pushes back:

Aptitude tests are not meaningless, but they are not a complete measure. They don’t capture tenacity, long-term memory, goal setting, and persistent but efficient effort towards those goals.

I saw this during my time in the military’s language training. Generally, if you did well on the aptitude test, you had a better chance at succeeding. But it wasn’t a perfect correlation. Some people did well on the two-hour aptitude test but could not retain the cumulative information over the 15-month course. Others could not maintain the needed level of effort and focus over that length of time. Still others had trouble with the psychological factors needed in language acquisition. These students were outperformed by the persistent students with good memory and a flexible, willing mindset.

This is why I support efforts to identify those students who are punching well above their weight. That is, they are scoring higher than you’d expect based on social factors such as poverty, poor schools, family makeup, and social status. (In some places that’s race, but in Appalachia it’s not.) If these students score within striking distance of the affluent norm, then they have overcome considerable drag in the process. It is a good bet that they will continue that persistence and do well in a selective, supportive college. We’d be wasting a great deal of potential to ignore this base of human capital.

Another reader retorts:

This is an insult to poor people everywhere. All this paternalistic pandering is just liberal arrogance—“you can't do it without my help because I am superior to you.” I was raised in greater poverty than the welfare of today but that did not prevent me from staying out of trouble, being honest, and studying just as hard as the affluent. One’s attitude and behavior is quite different when you have to earn what you get instead have it given to you.

What do you think? Drop me an email and I’ll post the strongest arguments from any side. Update from a reader:

I read all the reader responses in your note. It seems that the people who argue against any extra efforts to add diversity to the campuses believe that entrance to an elite school is purely based on merit. However, that’s not true. The schools consider many elements: legacy admissions, extracurricular activities, and significant other talents (musical, athletic, etc). I am certain that I was accepted to an Ivy based on geographical diversity. (I’m from Newfoundland, Canada.) So, it is entirely reasonable within this framework for the schools to consider financial and racial diversity.

One more reader for now:

Given the disproportionate numbers of Jewish and Asian students in elite institutions, it is simply mathematically impossible for other ethnic groups to match their population proportions.  If the same analysis applied to blacks were to be applied to the Polish, the Italians, the Germans, Appalachian whites, etc, it would be mathematically impossible for them all to hit their population percentage.

Either quotas need to be introduced (again) to keep Jews and Asians at their “rightful” level, or the disproportions need to be accepted as a natural outcome of a meritocracy where some groups outshine others … until the laggard groups somehow change their achievement levels.

Resegregating the federal government did not merely mean white and black people not being able to hold hands, it meant civic plunder. Here is Gordon J. Davis recounting how Wilson destroyed the livelihood of his grandfather, John Davis:

Over a long career, he rose through the ranks from laborer to a position in midlevel management. He supervised an office in which many of his employees were white men. He had a farm in Virginia and a home in Washington. By 1908, he was earning the considerable salary — for an African-American — of $1,400 per year.

But only months after Woodrow Wilson was sworn in as president in 1913, my grandfather was demoted. He was shuttled from department to department in various menial jobs, and eventually became a messenger in the War Department, where he made only $720 a year.

By April 1914, the family farm was auctioned off. John Davis, a self-made black man of achievement and stature in his community at the turn of the 20th century, was, by the end of Wilson’s first term, a broken man. He died in 1928.

Davis was an upstanding, tax-paying American. But he faced a danger that most upstanding, tax-paying Americans of that day didn’t face—the destruction of wealth for the better upholding of white supremacy. And because wealth is inherited, the effects of this plunder redound through the generations.

As I said, I didn’t go to a school like Princeton. But one need not have that experience, to understand why seeing one’s University celebrate the name of someone who plundered your ancestors—in a country that has yet to acknowledge that plunder—might be slightly disturbing.

Free speech is one of the most important constitutional freedoms. The key test of any freedom is whether exercising that freedom harms any other freedom. Hate speech is generally accepted as one of the limits. [CB note: There is no “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment, but there is for “fighting words” and “true threats.”] Dressing up in a way that is hurtful for others is certainly at least bordering on hate speech.

What defines hate speech is a moving target—a group that is vulnerable or who suffers discrimination is prone to hurt more than a group that is in a position of privilege or power. Nonetheless, treating hurtful speech as a normal mode of expression is not something that should be encouraged, even in circumstances where it may be tolerable within the definition of freedom of speech.

Yale as one of the world’s top educational institutions should be a centre for thoughtful discourse. Opening the lines of debate by a mealy-mouthed, vaguely-intentioned discouragement of openly racist displays is not a good start. Attacking that statement as too strong? How is that supposed to be thoughtful or civilised? There is nothing either thoughtful or civilised about racism.

It’s worth reading the whole email from Christakis to determine for yourself whether it was thoughtful or civilized. An email from a Yale grad (‘88):

I want to echo what other readers have written to you all thanking you for Notes—indeed, as someone commented recently, it fills a hole where The Dish used to be. As an alum of Yale University, I have been distressed at the news I have read and heard over the airwaves—mostly because of how absurd the controversy is, but also because of the gross misrepresentation of the contents of Prof. Erika Christakis’ letter by those supporting the student activists, and the complete ignorance of many of those activists about the university they attend.

Friedersdorf did a great job explaining how the letter Prof. Christakis wrote was quite respectful of the fact that students will have different views on what is offensive and what is not, and that students should engage those with whom they differ in discussion of their differences. What he wrote about the letter perfectly sums up my thoughts on it from my time at Yale: “When I was in college, a position of this sort taken by a faculty member would likely have been regarded as a show of respect for all students and their ability to think for themselves.”

As a side note, I found it odd that supposedly liberal students were harassing and berating Prof. Nicholas Christakis for the actions of his wife. I thought we were well past the days when husbands were supposed to account for what their wives did.

One of the latest issues to pop up in the discussion of what is transpiring at Yale, and by far the most infuriating, revolves around the term “Master.” I worked as a student aid in the office of the Master of my residential college, so I have good familiarity with the role of a Master at Yale (at least how that role was conceived 30 years ago, though I doubt it has changed). Certain activists claim that the word hearkens back to what is imagined as a slavery-sympathetic university, with the term “Master” representing a legacy of that slavery-loving past. The link, it is argued, is provided through the naming of one of Yale’s residential colleges after John C. Calhoun.

Calhoun College was founded in 1933, and at the time Calhoun, a graduate of Yale, was considered one of the nation’s greatest statesmen. I do not think the university sat back and said, “Gee, let’s pick someone who supported slavery as a name for our new college.” Yale, to its great credit, initiated a conversation in August of this year to discuss whether Calhoun College should remain named after such a vehement supporter of slavery and white rule—hardly the act of an administration that is insensitive to the perceptions and feelings of its non-white students. (I wonder, however, what liberals make of Calhoun’s opposition to the war with Mexico, as he was concerned not only with racial issues, but about abuse of executive power and feeding the public’s lust for empire.)

Brushing this tendentious argument aside, the term “Master” for the head of a residential college does not derive from or have any connection to plantation life (which would be very odd indeed, were it the case, as the residential colleges were founded in an exceedingly Yankee institution in 1933, a bit shy of seven decades after the end of the Civil War). As any semi-educated person should know, “Master” comes from the academic universe of the United Kingdom. (Here’s a simple Wikipedia article on the subject).

To object to the term “Master” because of supposed slave associations of that term is not only ahistorical, it is offensive to those who suffer real oppression and struggle daily with the legacy of racism in our nation.

Our Politics section has run two pieces on Calhoun. Lincoln Caplan drills down into the history of the college and concludes: “The Calhoun name is Yale’s Confederate flag. It’s time the flag came down.” R. Owen Williams, on the other hand, worries about the “danger of erasing Yale’s Confederate ties.” He comes up with a novel solution:

[R]ather than changing the name of Calhoun College, the university should acknowledge the good and bad of history, and amend the name to Bouchet Calhoun College. In 1876, Edward Alexander Bouchet became the first African American to receive a doctorate in any subject from an American university, at Yale. Joining these two historical figures would stimulate a more honest and comprehensive discourse about American history.

Lastly, a reality check from a local:

I work about two blocks and a world away from the Yale Quad and the very spot where Ms. Luther shouted obscenities at the Christakis. The New Haven I see everyday is a human wasteland—of homeless, of obesity, of addictions, of crime, of unemployment, of welfare dependency, of school dropouts, and, most of all, of wasted potential. [CB note: Here’s a good article with data and maps: “Poor residents in greater Hartford and greater New Haven are just as likely to live in an extremely poor, predominantly minority neighborhood as those in greater Detroit or greater Philadelphia.”]

The irony of the situation is overwhelming. A very, very privileged few students screaming to be handled more carefully. To be allowed to live in safe spaces? How in the world have these students come to believe that they should not have to see a Halloween costume that might offend them? Or hear slights? Or make their own home? Or, for that matter, express their opinions without resorting to obscenities and tears?

The world outside Academia is a far tougher place than they are ready for. I think these students have been failed, but not in the way they imagine. They have been deprived of the real-world experiences that allow children to grow up, to leave childhood behind and assume the most basic of responsibilities—the loss of narcissism.

For the record, the Yale senior at the center of the controversy is very involved off campus:

Much of Luther’s information is lost, as she’s taken down her Twitter and Facebook profiles and her Instagram page is private. However, what remains shows that she’s a coordinator for Project Homeless Connect, which offers social and health care services to the homeless. According to her bio at The Globalist, she also works with the Yale Refugee Project. Her bio on PresentTense describes her as having a passion for social justice and helping others.

In the military I firsthand witnessed occasional racism—not institutionalized nor systemic. Some men, largely those born below the Mason-Dixon line, would indeed make disparaging, aggressive, and/or malevolent comments toward my dark-green Marine brothers.  At college, I again heard of racial tensions between student groups. I wholeheartedly acknowledge and support the causes that the students at Mizzou/Yale/Ithaca/CMC/Amherst and other colleges are fighting for. Their cause is just and needed.  

However, I would like to make a distinction that I think is necessary in light on the events of the last two weeks. There are currently thousands of combat veterans on campuses across the United States, men and women who fought al-Qaida in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan who are now reintegrating into society and taking advantage of the incredible generosity of the Post 9/11 GI Bill.  Speaking as a veteran who saw combat, and who had friends killed and wounded, it is difficult for me to reconcile the idea that campuses are not “safe spaces” for students. To me, a “safe space” is one in which no one is actively trying to kill you. Forget micro-aggressions; there is a large subset of students on American campuses who spent many of their formative years being shot at and blown up by IEDs.  

If a student’s comfort on campus is determined relatively—i.e. they do not feel “included” or “like a typical” member of campus—I would like to remind them that that relativity goes further. After my deployment to Afghanistan, a member of my unit, Kyle Carpenter, was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, for diving onto a hand grenade to save his friend. That kind of environment, to me, constitutes an “un-safe space.”

Again, I do agree that there is racism in academia, and I would say there are issues with racism, to a lesser degree, within the military. I only want to provide nuance to the current student activists, who seem so quick to fear for their safety. Please keep in mind that some of your fellow students went through periods of no physical safety—that they walked, day in and day out, amongst people who actively sought to kill them.  

My Millennial peers who are still on college campuses do their causes disservice by claiming conversations about inappropriate Halloween costumes cause them to fear for their safety. Talk to a student veteran about fearing for your safety, before invoking such hyperbolic terms.

Some students said they believe administrators are hoping that the protests will die down soon, especially because finals and Thanksgiving break are approaching. “This is just the beginning,” Riley said. "There will be [a demonstration] the first day after break.”

Zooming out, Mother Jones takes stock of the most notable campus protests so far and provides a map:

Hey! Some enterprising student journalist should make a canonical, updating list of protestor demands. There’s a huge need for it right now.

— Robinson Meyer (@yayitsrob) November 19, 2015

Okay but Northwestern’s not on there, nor are the black Yale alumni—I think there’s still an opening for an independent journalist here.

— Robinson Meyer (@yayitsrob) November 19, 2015

Many of the demonstrators then approached the sitting students and chanted “F**k your white privilege” and “F**k your white asses,” demonstrator Dan Korff-Korn ’19 said. “It was important to point out that the students sitting there in the library at the computers represented this greater degree of ignorance, apathy and privilege that you see at Dartmouth, but the way it was done by personally attacking people was counterproductive,” Korff-Korn said. [...] “While I don’t think the protest should happen again to the extent where people are being yelled at and making people cry, I think the invasion of space needed to be done,” [student David] Tramonte said.

The college administration has stepped in to say sorry—to the protestors:

Vice provost for student affairs Inge-Lise Ameer was in attendance at the meeting, and she apologized to students who engaged in the protest for the negative responses and media coverage that they have received. “There’s a whole conservative world out there that’s not being very nice,” Ameer said.

Veitch was extolled for his supposed accomplishments. One of which being his “tireless[ness] in hiring a diverse faculty and staff.” In 2013 the college had 7% black faculty, 10% Latinx faculty, and 12% API faculty. A school where over two thirds of tenured faculty is white can ever be commended for hiring diverse faculty and staff.

Two-thirds of Americans nationwide—64 percent—are White. “7% black faculty, 10% Latinx faculty” are indeed lower than the nationwide numbers of 12 percent Black and 16 percent Hispanic, but Occidental’s “12% API ” is far outpacing the 5 percent of Americans who are Asian or Pacific Islander (API). Should White faculty be fired to fill precise racial quotas? Should the API percentage also be lowered?

The percentage of students at Occidental this year who are African American is 4.5 percent, so “7% black faculty” is in fact overly representative. It would be wonderful if both numbers were higher, but should a president lose his job over it, a president whose institution ranks 13 among hundreds of liberal arts colleges in terms of ethnic diversity?

Occidental College is also notable for having one of its former students go on to become the first African American to be elected and reelected President of the United States. He didn’t appear to need a safe space:

“It’s a wonderful, small liberal arts college,” President Obama says of Oxy. “The professors were diverse and inspiring. I ended up making some lifelong friendships there, and those first two years really helped me grow up.” … Oxy was the place where the future president made his first political speech on Feb. 18, 1981 as part of a movement to persuade the Occidental Board of Trustees to divest the College of its investments in South Africa. “I found myself drawn into a larger role [in the divestment movement] … I noticed that people had begun to listen to my opinions,” Obama recalled.

Many young Millennials may not know that South Africa in 1981 was governed under something called apartheid, a brutal system of racial segregation and physical violence.

In September, Obama joined the debate over the new campus politics by saying, in part, “I don’t agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of view.” Will a reporter ask him about his old college? Update: I missed Obama’s interview with Stephanopoulos this week:

OBAMA: [...] The civil-rights movement happened because there was civil disobedience, because people were willing to get to go to jail, because there were events like Bloody Sunday. But it was also because the leadership of the movement consistently stayed open to the possibility of reconciliation and sought to understand the views, even views that were appalling to them of the other side.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Because there does seem to be a strain on some of these campuses of a kind of militant political correctness where you shut down the other side.

OBAMA: And I disagree with that. And, it's interesting. You know, I've now got, you know, daughters who — one is about to go to college — the other one's — you know, going to be on her way in a few years. And then we talk about this at the dinner table.

And I say to them, "Listen, if you hear somebody using a racial epithet, if you hear somebody who's anti-Semitic, if you see an injustice, I want you to speak out. And I want you to be firm and clear and I want you to protect people who may not have voices themselves. I want you to be somebody who's strong and sees themselves as somebody who's looking out for the vulnerable."

But I tell 'em — "I want you also to be able to listen. I don't want you to think that a display of your strength is simply shutting other people up. And that part of your ability to bring about change is going to be by engagement and understanding the viewpoints and the arguments of the other side." And so when I hear, for example, you know, folks on college campuses saying, "We're not going to allow somebody to speak on our campus because we disagree with their ideas or we feel threatened by their ideas —" you know, I think that's a recipe for dogmatism. And I think you're not going to be as effective. And so, but I want to be clear here 'cause, and it's a tough issue because, you know, there are two values that I care about.

I care about civil rights and I care about kids not being discriminated against or having swastikas painted on their doors or nooses hung — thinking it's a joke. I think it's entirely appropriate for — any institution, including universities, to say, "Don't walk around in blackface. It offends people. Don't wear a headdress and beat your chest if Native American students have said, you know, 'This hurts us. This bothers us." There's nothing wrong with that.

But we also have these values of free speech. And it's not free speech in the abstract. The purpose of that kind of free speech is to make sure that we are forced to use argument and reason and words in making our democracy work. And you know, then you don't have to be fearful of somebody spouting bad ideas. Just out-argue 'em, beat 'em.

Make the case as to why they're wrong. Win over adherents. That's how — that's how things work in — in a democracy. And I do worry if young people start getting trained to think that if somebody says something I don't like, if somebody says something that hurts my feelings that my only recourse is to shut them up, avoid them, push them away, call on a higher power to protect me from that. You know, and yes, does that put more of a burden on minority students or gay students or Jewish students or others in a majority that may be blind to history and blind to their hurt? It may put a slightly higher burden on them.

But you're not going to make the kinds of deep changes in society — that those students want, without taking it on, in a full and clear and courageous way. And you know, I tell you I trust Malia in an argument. If a knucklehead on a college campus starts talking about her, I guarantee you she will give as good as she gets.

So pitch perfect.

The newest generation of scholars (myself included) have been increasingly focused on the nuts and bolts of how institutions, movements, and networks in history functioned. While not ignoring the very real insights from our linguistically-inclined predecessors, we seem to be more interested in the tangible, material, aspect of historical problems.

It’s not that questions of identity and language don’t matter to us, but we have taken investigations to the next level. Or so it seems to me from the shore of Lake Michigan. I wanted to share that view with you in the spirit of (as historians love to do) “complicating” an already fascinating discussion.

One more reader via the hello@ address:

There are some big issues here, and strong feelings—about race, about privilege, about the First Amendment and other civil rights.  Yet what strikes me after reading a lot of news coverage is how irrelevant all this is to the world at large, or even to the academy. I am sure the students who feel aggrieved by aggressions micro- and macro-, and the administrators afraid for their jobs, think it is highly meaningful, and politicians will ride the issue of “political correctness” as far as they can.  

The problem is that the ideological center of the discussion resides in, and is almost entirely limited to, the humanities. Contrary to the self-congratulatory narrative of academic humanists, poets are not the unacknowledged legislators of mankind.

Here is something you will never see in any syllabus: “Trigger warning: nature of reality. The following chapter on quantum mechanics contains a discussion of entanglement and Bell’s Theorem, and may raise fundamental questions about the nature of time and space, and therefore reality, thus causing discomfort and a feeling of being unsafe on the part of those grounded in a Newtonian world view.”

Nor this:  “The following chapter and related labs on developmental biology may cause discomfort to some religious groups who do not believe in evolution, to those who believe in inherent racial superiority, or to those who are afraid of blood.”

Cheap satire? Maybe, but that’s not my intent.  Actually, I myself am terrified by the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics and by the fact that I am dependent on so many devices and technologies the workings of which I cannot comprehend.  That’s my point: Our true rulers care very little for the arguments that mean much to those of us schooled in the humanities. There is nothing “postmodern,” there is no “cultural turn,” there are no meaningful “intersectionalities” in a university’s schools of medicine, business, engineering, or in any STEM department.  

And that is where the money is. In terms of the university budget, that is where it comes from, and that is where it goes. That translates to power and relevance.  The rest of us are just playing at being Matthew Arnold or Cornel West. The only reason the news media are paying any attention at all is that they are in the reality TV business.  With all due respect to the semioticians and SJWs, you cannot change the reality of the Higgs Boson by giving it a different name, nor can you check its privilege.

Update from a reader who quotes the previous one:

“With all due respect to the semioticians and SJWs, you cannot change the reality of the Higgs Boson by giving it a different name, nor can you check its privilege.”  I take his or her point to be that science is made up of universal, constant laws, which scientists only need to discover and acknowledge. Thus the fields of physics, mathematics, engineering, medicine, etc., are immune from any cultural or social critique of their theory or practice. 

This kind of ahistorical nonsense—like something out of a 1950s sci-fi novel—is what happens when individuals embrace some ideal notion of “science” as its own complete ethos.  The entire history of the practice of science since Copernicus has been that of a constant struggle between human scientists making empirical observations and the cultural frameworks of those same scientists.  These frameworks almost always determine how scientists interpret the meaning of the information they observe. 

From Kepler—who was convinced that the planets’ orbits had to follow patterns that matched the shapes of perfect geometric solids—to Einstein, who refused to accept the reality of quantum mechanics because “God does not play at dice,” science always has existed and will always exist in a particular cultural and social context that shapes what scientists “see.” The fact that so many are willing to put science on a pedestal as some kind of ideal activity speaks to the technocratic moment we’re living in, despite some notion that the “SJW”s are ruining everything for those who simply love facts and truth.

A retort:

You followed my note with a response from a reader who thinks my view of how science relates to its cultural context is backward. S/he wrote:

The entire history of the practice of science since Copernicus has been that of a constant struggle between human scientists making empirical observations and the cultural frameworks of those same scientists.  These frameworks almost always determine how scientists interpret the meaning of the information they observe.

Really?  Catholic doctrine and The Inquisition determined how Galileo interpreted his observed data? Galileo’s recantation paid tribute to the political correctness of his day, but he did not let it determine his theory (“Still, it moves!”). From the point of view of history, Galileo sat in judgment of the cultural framework of his day, not the other way round.

My respondent’s take sounds like the English Department’s bid for relevancy—“Let the scientists play with their models and ignore us, but we determine the culture, and the culture determines everything. They can speak only on matters of science; we can speak on everything.” Vanity. C.P. Snow’s two cultures are still very much with us on campus, and even further apart than ever.

BTW, the reader also suggested that my comment implied a belief that “the fields of physics, mathematics, engineering, medicine, etc., are immune from any cultural or social critique of their theory or practice.” I didn’t say that nor do I believe it. The theories—and most definitely the practices—of science and technology are definitely liable to criticism, though the persuasiveness of such criticism will have something to do with how well the critic understands the science s/he criticizes.

[CMC seniors Rachel Doehr and Katharine Eger] said Spellman had counseled hundreds of students during her years at Claremont and was a particularly strong advocate for those who suffered from sexual assaults. The dean led efforts to establish a new campus center for sexual assault prevention and support and helped strengthen education about the issue at student orientations, among other things, they said.

Safety from sexual violence should be a higher priority than a safe space for offensive speech. Taylor Lemmons, one of the two CMC students who threatened a hunger strike, responds to the backlash at Medium:

This is not to say that Dean Spellman did not help some students. Her actions reflected that she was unable to help all students.

I appreciate the definition of a hunger strike. I do not appreciate the patronizing assumption that I am unaware of what a hunger strike means. “Were Mary Spellman’s offenses so great that you would die for her resignation?”

Yes. I would die for my people: for every student that felt unsupported, not-advocated for and silenced by the Dean of Students office and the former Dean of Students.

Meanwhile, Conor has a new post up this morning responding to criticism from TNR’s Roxane Gay. A reader differs with Conor here:

As I see it, their core error is not one particular to Yale activists, or participants in the nationwide protest movement about race on campus, but is shared by one faction of the left, diverse in race, gender, and cause of choice, that relies too heavily on stigma and too little on persuasion.

Close, but not quite. The core issue is that the protests are about the activists, not some slight they have been subjected to or, more likely, heard about third hand. Issues are secondary. The core is that the activists want to join the firmament of activists of old. To be a part of a movement to be remembered. If you’re looking for some unifying ideology you’ll be sorely disappointed. Narcissism is the core, not ideology.

As always, email hello@theatlantic.com if you’d like to join the debate.

I’m a pro-choice liberal who has been invited to infect evangelical Christian universities with progressive thoughts, and to address Catholic universities where I’ve praised condoms and birth control programs. I’m sure I discomfited many students on these conservative campuses, but it’s a tribute to them that they were willing to be challenged. In the same spirit, liberal universities should seek out pro-life social conservatives to speak.

More broadly, academia — especially the social sciences — undermines itself by a tilt to the left. We should cherish all kinds of diversity, including the presence of conservatives to infuriate us liberals and make us uncomfortable.

Mark Salter, the former chief of staff to John McCain, sides with Kristof:

Some conservatives select the kinds of news they wish to receive, preferring media outlets that echo their opinions. They mock and revile contrary opinions, but they don’t typically forbid their utterance in their presence, as was the case recently at Mizzou and Yale and other universities. The growing intolerance of the left deserves more media attention than it has received ...

Salter then illustrates the illiberal natural of safe spaces in public places by recalling the death of a close friend:

Reporters were waiting outside the church where his funeral was held. They tried to be tactful, but they were intruding in a space where a lot people were suffering a lot of pain. A few of the mourners resented it. But most, including his immediate family, accepted the intrusion graciously. They might have wished the reporters had covered other stories that day, but they didn’t argue they had no business being there. They understood the requirements of good journalism and good manners aren’t always compatible.  

Another such example comes from Jamie Kirchick, a Yale alum who attended a controversial and contentious talk by poet Amiri Baraka in 2003:

Baraka’s assertions of Israeli complicity in the Sept. 11 attacks, which he reiterated after reading the poem with vague citations to Arab newspapers, were met with applause and a standing ovation from the assembled Yale students. When he noticed my skeptical expression from the back of the room, he diagnosed me as suffering from “constipation of the face” and being in need of “a brain enema,” to the uproarious laughter of my classmates. [...]

I did not insist upon the establishment of a “safe space” to sulk in my humiliation. Instead, I retired to my dorm and wrote about the event, in my capacity as a budding columnist for the Yale Daily News. Baraka’s speech, and, more importantly, the rapturous response, I wrote, “was one of the most disturbing events in my entire life.” That this trial by fire was provoked not by the white skinheads or Muslim anti-Zionists I had naively assumed were the only purveyors of anti-Semitic hatred, but by blacks, who, because of our shared history of oppression, I had been brought up to believe, were supposed to be my allies, made it all the more distressing.

Today, I look back on the entire incident as a formative event in my evolution from teenager to adult. My experience at Yale of confronting painful ideas, emotionally vexing situations, and learning how to cope with them, informs my opinion about the events roiling the campus today.

Freddie deBoer, the socialist academic at Purdue, appeals to pragmatism as much as principle when addressing the activist left on campus:

[U]nfortunately, there is in fact a strain of the academic left that does see freedom of speech as an outdated artifact of white supremacy, which I have encountered in both my academic and political life. I recognize why student protesters might feel moved to adopt an anti-free speech stance. [ … But] in order to effectively fight racism, these passionate student protesters will have to win over converts to their cause. That’s not an invocation of an abstract political principle; it’s a simple statement of the practicality of power. Because the white majority controls most of this country’s institutions, anti-racist activists must rally masses to their cause, to utilize people power. They must gain the support of those who are not already convinced of their message, whether or not that expectation is fair.

The final word in this round of commentary goes to college students themselves, namely an editorial from the Claremont Independent, a campus newspaper at Claremont McKenna led by editor-in-chief Hannah Oh:

We are ashamed of you [the student activists at this rally] for trying to end someone’s career over a poorly worded email. This is not a political statement––this is a person’s livelihood that you so carelessly sought to destroy. We are disappointed that you chose to scream and swear at your administrators. That is not how adults solve problems, and your behavior reflects poorly on all of us here in Claremont. This is not who we are and this is not how we conduct ourselves, but this is the image of us that has now reached the national stage.

We are disappointed in your demands. If you want to take a class in “ethnic, racial, and sexuality theory,” feel free to take one, but don’t force such an ideologically driven course on all CMC students. If the dearth of such courses at CMC bothers you, maybe you should have chosen a different school. If students chose to attend Caltech and then complained about the lack of literature classes, that’s on them. [...]

We are disappointed that you’ve used phrases like “silence is violence” to not only demonize those who oppose you, but all who are not actively supporting you. We are most disappointed, however, in the rhetoric surrounding “safe spaces.” College is the last place that should be a safe space. We come here to learn about views that differ from our own, and if we aren’t made to feel uncomfortable by these ideas, then perhaps we aren’t venturing far enough outside of our comfort zone. We would be doing ourselves a disservice to ignore viewpoints solely on the grounds that they may make us uncomfortable, and we would not be preparing ourselves to cope well with adversity in the future. [...] The hypocrisy of advocating for “safe spaces” while creating an incredibly unsafe space for President Chodosh, former Dean Spellman, the student who was “derailing,” and the news media representatives who were verbally abused unfortunately seemed to soar over many of your heads.

Lastly, we are disappointed in students like ourselves, who were scared into silence. We are not racist for having different opinions. We are not immoral because we don’t buy the flawed rhetoric of a spiteful movement. We are not evil because we don’t want this movement to tear across our campuses completely unchecked. We are no longer afraid to be voices of dissent.

As always, if you have any dissenting views of your own, email hello@theatlantic.com and I’ll post the strongest, most persuasive ones.

I am a public interest attorney* (waiting on bar exam results in ten days - yikes). My job is to listen to my clients, help them with what I can, and on a broader level work to create a society which corrects the injustices inflicted upon them. In particular, the vast majority of my clients are young people of color. Homeless, runaway, gay, lesbian, transgender, abused, neglected, drug-addicted, mentally ill young people who live day-to-day, meal-to-meal, with the constant threat of mortal violence at the hands of law enforcement or another person on the street hanging over them.

My fights are to dispute thousands of dollars in unjust ticket debt, to force a school district to give a teenager an education, to find a way to make sure someone with no safety net has a safe place to stay, something good to eat, a friendly face to talk to, and a hand to pull them up if they fall. A phone number to call if they feel unsafe. A job, a home, a future. I had a client yesterday with a black eye come in and ask us to help her figure out how to escape from a boyfriend who chokes and beats her, and then threatens suicide when she threatens to leave. I had another client last week who got arrested and thrown in jail after asserting his right to reasonable suspicion for stepping into the street to avoid a homeless person camping on the sidewalk.

I guess my point is that in the fight for racial justice, in the fight against poverty, we have limited time and resources to accomplish the things we want to accomplish. So when I hear activists talking about how one professor’s alleged insensitivity to Halloween cultural appropriation is causing their friends to have breakdowns; when I see so-called progressives threatening and shoving journalists for covering their story; when I hear friends describe “conservatives” and "Republicans" like Hutus would refer to Tutsis, I see a swiftly emptying hourglass of attention for progressive issues.

If you disagree with these views or others posted thus far, please email hello@theatlantic.com and I’ll air the best counterpoints or differing viewpoints.

It is to create an environment where the free “marketplace of ideas” can flourish. Free speech is a critical part of that marketplace, but equally critical is that all participants feel secure and valued enough to listen without fear. Turning a blind eye to bigoted or similarly ignorant speech or symbolic conduct conveys a message of its own—that certain people’s fears and distress doesn’t matter. It conveys that Yale is not theirs, but belongs at its core to the same people who explicitly ran it for their own benefit for most of three centuries.

The Christakises are not racist, and neither are the vast majority of their supporters. They are simply people who lack the experience of being made to feel they don’t belong, or that they specifically don’t belong at Yale, because of their visible heritage. It simply never occurred to the pair how that kind of disempowerment skews the ability to participate in the marketplace of ideas: The powerless can’t hear, and the powerful have no incentive to listen.

The second mistake was context. The administration was originally trying, admirably in my view, to avoid outright punishment of offensive speech while still modeling good behavior and respect in a diverse community. While the Christakises email made some excellent points in a vacuum, styling it as a counterpoint to the IAC email changed the message completely. If you state, for example, that all of our lives are precious and worthy of protection from harm, that is totally uncontroversial. But if you answer “Black Lives Matter” with “All Lives Matter,” the exact same sentiment now denigrates and dismisses the struggles and concerns of people of color. The Christakises and their supporters failed to recognize that difference.

Unlike the “All Lives Matter” crowd, though, it is clear that the Christakises acted not out of bigotry but from a failure of experience and imagination. That is why the result of their email has indeed been a powerful teaching moment—just not the kind they thought, and not for whom they intended.

A very different view from this reader:

In this discussion, we are emphasizing the catastrophization of ethnic/sexual/gender slights. My understanding of catastrophization is this: a person treating a minor slight as an existential threat. In the Atlantic cover story, catastrophization is partly ascribed to a sense of entitlement or sensitivity on the part of a coddled generation. But I am not sure that this is totally correct.

I think catastrophization is two things: (1) a tactic for building a movement’s strength, and (2) a chance for young people to “practice” civil protest. Unfortunately, if this is correct, the movement builds strength at the expense of sincerity.

Take the Yale Halloween incident as an example. A professor makes a reasonable attempt to engage with angry students, and is met with demands for resignation. A student, apparently representing the feelings of the crowd, confronts the professor's husband, spews buzzwords until the man responds, and then she explodes into a profanity-laced tirade. The tirade seems almost unrelated to the man's response, except that she began it immediately after his calm words.

How can young men and women, apparently the best and brightest of America, be so absurd? What explains their lack of insight? Are they truly over-sensitive? They had to overcome some tough hurdles just to have made it to Yale. They can’t be this sensitive.

My understanding of catastrophization provides an alternative explanation. I think it is a tactic, one the European “professional revolutionaries” of 1848 would have admired. You provoke your opponent into attack, and then use that attack to solidify your moral high ground. Gain the sympathy of the public. You win a small battle, and you build up your power to intimidate.

In the Yale situation, the man’s response was not malicious enough to the young protester’s outrage. By his calm, he won the round. You can tell by the public’s mostly anti-protester reaction to the incident. But had Yale sent security, even to try and “ease” the situation, the protester would have won, and sympathy would be on her side.

Regardless of the Yale battle’s success, the movement can utilize incidents like it to prepare for future confrontations, which will be of greater significance than Halloween costumes. There is not going to be a Ferguson or Baltimore on every campus all the time—catastrophization is necessary to allow people to practice for the real thing.

Thus catastrophization serves both to solidify the movement’s prestige through small victories and to allow members of the movement to practice tactics in a relatively safe environment. It is not a random manifestation of entitlement or over-sensitivity. However, this tactic risks undermining the perceived sincerity of the movement and numbing the public to the public to expressions of outrage.

The photo started circulating early Sunday after CMC junior Casey Garcelon reposted the photo on her Facebook with the caption “Dear Claremont community, For anyone who ever tries to invalidate the experiences of POC at the Claremont Colleges, here is a reminder of why we feel the way we do. Don’t tell me I’m overreacting, don’t tell me I’m being too sensitive. My voice will not be silenced. I’m mentally drained from being a part of this community and I’ve had enough.

The class president, Erin Brackmann, apologized profusely to Garcelon and asked if she could please take down the photo:

In one of her messages, Brackmann wrote, “I fully understand your decision to keep the photo up, but could you please crop me out of it? It associates me with something I also think is offensive and a lot of comments have been targeted at me, by people who think that I was part of the group costume. I don’t want this to compromise my role and legitimacy as class president.”

Garcelon refused. She then publicly posted several Facebook messages and email from Brackmann and the other women in the photo. Apparently private correspondence isn’t considered a safe space at Claremont McKenna.

Some words “by their very utterance” cause injury or incite an immediate breach of peace, and they do not receive constitutional protection.[2] Among the category of unprotected speech are “true threats,” statements in which a speaker expresses a “serious” intent “to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals.”[3] Even though statutes that punish unprotected speech have “never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem”[4] and Congress has made it a crime to use interstate communications facilities to make “threats,” the law governing this subject has been unclear.[5]

The federal circuit courts of appeals disagree over the correct mens rea requirement necessary to prove a violation of the federal threat statute. A majority of those courts require the government to prove only that the defendant knowingly made a statement that “was not the result of mistake, duress, or coercion” and that a “reasonable person” would regard as threatening.[6] Other courts have required a different, stricter standard—one that requires the government to prove not only that the defendant knowingly made a statement reasonably perceived as threatening, but also that he subjectively intended for his communication to be threatening.[7]

Update: A letter sent by the Foundation of Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), Greg Lukianoff’s group, to Mizzou officials today contains a passage especially relevant to this history:

[T]he University of Missouri itself is at the center of one of the [U.S. Supreme] Court’s most famous decisions applying this principle [that merely offensive or hurtful speech is protected] specifically to the public university campus. In Papish v. Board of Curators of the University of Missouri, 410 U.S. 667, 670 (1973), the Court held that “the mere dissemination of ideas—no matter how offensive to good taste—on a state university campus may not be shut off in the name alone of ‘conventions of decency.’” That case memorably upheld the rights of journalism student Barbara Papish to distribute a newspaper featuring a cartoon depicting police officers raping the Statue of Liberty and the Goddess of Justice, as well as an article titled “Motherfucker Acquitted.”

Flag desecration, funeral protests, and cartoons of the kind distributed by Papish are without question considered “hateful” or “hurtful” by some, even by many. With passions running high at Mizzou in the midst of important discussions and debates on the topics of race, equality, and justice, it is quite likely, if not inevitable, that some exchanges were and will be considered hateful or hurtful. It is crucial that students be able to carry out such debates without fear that giving offense will result in being reported to the police and referred for discipline by the university. Indeed, the expectation that the right of students to fully express themselves on the Mizzou campus will be respected is part of what has made the demonstrations of the last few weeks possible.

Many fields have moved away from a materialist view of the world and toward a seemingly obsessive focus on discourse as the most important explanation for social problems like income inequality, racism, sexism, etc. The idea, to put it simply, is that the way we represent people, places, and things is as important—if not more important—than reality itself.

In fact, reality is actually itself shaped by the way it is represented.  Thus, making use of clichés and stereotypes, using a word that contains certain connotations, or even simply speaking at all without the proper qualifications (primarily based on gender/race/class identity) may not just be questions of taste but, instead, potentially grave acts of violence.

Some may remember that in the 1990s, this formed the basis for a broad debate in academia over the merits of what was generally referred to as “postmodernism.”  This debate is pretty much over, partially due to the turnover of older professors trained in materialist methodologies retiring and being replaced by younger scholars who enthusiastically embrace the priorities of the “cultural turn.”

Also, I suspect, the debate is over because of the frustrating inefficacy of a conversation in which disagreement is construed as oppression or violence. It’s simply easier for the many professors who do not share the research priorities of the cultural turn—for example, a sociologist studying the reasons for poor health conditions in Indian slums instead of the language surrounding poor health in an Indian slum—to simply defer to their discourse-focused colleagues on most issues rather than risk career-damaging accusations of “silencing” or “marginalizing” or “epistemological violence.”

Perfectly apt and inoffensive words like “native” are considered too retrograde for public use owing to their perceived, oppressive connotations. That word is replaced by longer, Latinate synonyms like “indigenous,” which are in turn rotated out for even longer, clumsier alternatives (“autochthonous”).  It is in this triviality-addicted academic environment that intellectually-engaged students begin to discover the world around them and to grapple with its many injustices.

A student concerned about the plight of Central American immigrants living illegally in the U.S., for example, learns that the first and most important steps to alleviating this problem are to change the language he or she uses to talk about the issue.  They are not “illegal immigrants”; they are “undocumented,” or preferably just “immigrants.” One should be wary about referring to them as “Hispanic” or “Latino,” as this may reify harmful, generalized stereotypes.  Referring to them as “refugees” rather than “immigrants” may call much-needed attention to the role of the U.S.’s drug policies in fomenting societal unrest in their countries of origin, but on the other hand it may reinforce negative perceptions of Central American nations as violent, backwards “banana republics.”  

Perhaps the student should avoid using any labels at all and allow individuals from the marginalized community identify themselves?  The stakes here are very high. While none of this, of course, has any effect on the living conditions of undocumented immigrants, change must begin somewhere.

Is it any wonder then, that within this academic zeitgeist, where terminology is considered the foundation of social change and language itself contains the capacity to inflict violence and heap misery upon millions of people, that politically-active students have begun to demand administrative action to control speech and other forms of expression on campus?  A blonde-haired, Anglo-American student dressed in a Villa-esque costume with bandoliers and a large sombrero is not just having fun with a pop-culture archetype on Halloween. She is mocking and degrading Mexican-American students on campus by appealing to clichés of Mexican lawlessness, and in so doing she makes campus an oppressive, potentially violent and unsafe space for other students of Mexican ancestry.

We know this because scholarship has been telling us this for decades. Decades of research on the role of language and representation in processes of oppression and marginalization has led to an academia where the free expression of ideas is tightly-controlled and the proponents of language-policing believe, with the kind of certainty that comes only from religion or theory, that they are engaged in a war against the forces of injustice.  

In order to move beyond the kind of campus environment where students feel threatened by their peers’ poor taste in costumes—or by an email written by a professor suggesting that their fellow students may be entitled to their poor taste—there must also be a change in the priorities and attitudes of professors themselves. It is up to the next generation of scholars entering the academy to find a way forward, out of this unpleasant and deeply trivial intellectual quagmire.  Based on the worldviews expressed by the current generation of students leading the “P.C.” charge, I am not optimistic.

Disagree with that assessment or simply have a different view to share? Email hello@theatlantic.com and I’ll air the strongest dissenting views. Update from a reader:

I am a graduate student in the humanities at UC Berkeley, and though my name/position are clear from my signature and email address, I would ask that I remain anonymous if my words should ever see the light of day. The second email you posted, from the graduate student at the midwestern research university, is illuminating in its anonymity. The position that the student takes, which I believe to be well-founded and fair, cannot really be taken with one’s name attached to it, especially if the speaker is a graduate student.

The reader’s fear is that the next generation of faculty—that is, the current graduate students—are training and learning in an intellectual environment detached from reality, all gripped by the fear that reckless talk about “reality” will make it real. Further, we are to fear that, if we describe reality as it is, we will be complicit in its ills. And thus we add successive layers of insulating language until we are engaging in nothing but semantics, a realm that people of our skill set can comfortably dominate.

As your first reader suggested, the tendency is inherently authoritarian, and like any authoritarian system, it is prone to internecine conflict. Sealed from the outside world behind this growing intellectual barrier, the near enemy is the only one near enough to throttle—thus the reason for the reader’s anonymity, and mine. The whole worldview leads inexorably to purges, and graduate students (and, increasingly, non-tenured faculty) are the most vulnerable targets.

In a roundabout way, though, I think the graduate student’s email is reason for hope, if indeed we hope for a revival of free speech and room for dissenting views. A fractious ideology like this one makes more enemies than friends, and although its proponents are quite loud, they are not necessarily preponderant in numbers.  Those who are skeptical of the entire edifice, and wise enough to keep their mouths shut, might very well comprise a silent majority—the term’s historical and cultural connotations be damned.

In March, the student government at Ithaca College, in upstate New York, went so far as to propose the creation of an anonymous microaggression-reporting system. Student sponsors envisioned some form of disciplinary action against “oppressors” engaged in belittling speech. One of the sponsors of the program said that while “not … every instance will require trial or some kind of harsh punishment,” she wanted the program to be “record-keeping but with impact.”

Full details on that dystopian idea here. For the protests Wednesday, Melissa Quinn chronicles the recent microaggressions that student leaders are using to pressure the president out of a job:

The first involved public safety officers who, during training sessions with Ithaca College resident assistants, allegedly made “racially insensitive” and “aggressive” statements, according to The Ithacan, Ithaca College’s student newspaper.

The second, [said Kyle Stewart, a spokesperson for the Student Government Association], centered on an off-campus party hosted by an unaffiliated fraternity last month. The party was themed “Preps and Crooks,” and students and alumni viewed the theme, described in a Facebook post, as “racially charged” and a “microaggression,” according to The Ithacan.

The last incident occurred during a university-sponsored event called “Blue Sky Reimagining” last month, where an African-American alumna of Ithaca College said she had a “savage hunger” to succeed in her professional career. A Caucasian Ithaca College alumnus speaking alongside the woman repeated her description, calling the alumna a “savage” multiple times, Stewart said. [...]

People of Color at Ithaca College called on Rochon to respond to the incidents and became frustrated when the responses from Ithaca College’s administration were inconsistent, Stewart said. In the case of the fraternity event, the response from college leadership was swift, and Ithaca distanced itself from both the fraternity and the event, calling the language in a post describing the party “reprehensible for its racial and class stereotyping,” the Ithacan reported.

Ithaca’s response to the comments at Blue Sky Reimagining, however, came days later—and after a video was taken offline.

And now there are rumblings at Smith College, the private women’s school in Northampton, MA:

[Students] walked out of class en masse Wednesday at noon in support of the injustices students of color face on college campuses nationwide. Raven Fowlkes-Witten, a Smith student who organized the movement, said she was inspired by a similar walk-out planned for Ithaca College Wednesday to protest their president’s handling of race issues on campus. [...]

About 200 people, including students, professors and the dean of the college, gathered in the middle of campus. Someone started chanting “who’s not here” to call attention to white students who don’t carry the burden of racism, Fowlkes-Witten said. The chant was also meant for students of color who can’t be at Smith because of institutional racism, she said.  

Update from a “loyal tipster” reader who flags “some complaints about Ithaca College’s president that have been passed out recently”:

For my news story, I couldn’t get any of the protestors to articulate what EXACTLY the changes they wanted. Apparently these protests have been going on every year since! The response of the white people I interviewed in the audience at the protest 20 years ago was bewilderment:

“Why are they shouting and making black power fists in the middle of warm, fall day? We’re just here to celebrate our community and bring out children, and then all these people show up screaming and angry. Why would they do that?”

Shouting things like “justice now” and waving black power fists and marching with angry scowled faces in the middle of a happy fall parade filled with small children—what can that do short of alienating and hardening the hearts of the people who are watching it? Hurling profanity at random groups of people—all it does is alienate the white people who actually believe in equality and want to partner with you.

If Mizzou black students want to make genuine systemic change, it will happen not through screaming, not using profanity and hysteria. It will happen by calmly and logically listing out concrete, specific changes they would like to see. And they need to measure “success” not by whether all 100 of their requests are met. Success is if SOME of the requests are met, and the ones that aren’t, it is calmly and respectfully debated what the reasons are.

My hunch is this whole issue is really about the larger broader social issues related to the arrests and shootings of black men around the country, and less about some sort of vile, threatening environment at Mizzou itself.

It’s worth noting the Concerned Students of 1950, the activist group that forced the resignations of Mizzou’s president and chancellor, did issue a list of fairly concrete, specific demands to the university last month:

I. We demand that the University of Missouri System President, Tim Wolfe, writes a handwritten apology to the Concerned Student 1-­9-­5-0 demonstrators and holds a press conference in the Mizzou Student Center reading the letter. In the letter and at the press conference, Tim Wolfe must acknowledge his white male privilege, recognize that systems of oppression exist, and provide a verbal commitment to fulfilling Concerned Student 1-9-5-­0 demands. We want Tim Wolfe to admit to his gross negligence, allowing his driver to hit one of the demonstrators, consenting to the physical violence of bystanders, and lastly refusing to intervene when Columbia Police Department used excessive force with demonstrators.

II. We demand the immediate removal of Tim Wolfe as UM system president. After his removal a new amendment to UM system policies must be established to have all future UM system president and Chancellor positions be selected by a collective of students, staff, and faculty of diverse backgrounds.

III. We demand that the University of Missouri meets the Legion of Black Collegians’ demands that were presented in 1969 for the betterment of the black community.

IV. We demand that the University of Missouri creates and enforces comprehensive racial awareness and inclusion curriculum throughout all campus departments and units, mandatory for all students, faculty, staff, and administration. This curriculum must be vetted, maintained, and overseen by a board comprised of students, staff, and faculty of color.

V. We demand that by the academic year 2017-2018, the University of Missouri increases the percentage of black faculty and staff campus-wide to 10%.

VI. We demand that the University of Missouri composes a strategic 10 year plan by May 1, 2016 that will increase retention rates for marginalized students, sustain diversity curriculum and training, and promote a more safe and inclusive campus.

VII. We demand that the University of Missouri increases funding and resources for the University of Missouri Counseling Center for the purpose of hiring additional mental health professionals -- particularly those of color, boosting mental health outreach and programming across campus, increasing campus-­wide awareness and visibility of the counseling center, and reducing lengthy wait times for prospective clients.

VIII. We demand that the University of Missouri increases funding, resources, and personnel for the social justices centers on campus for the purpose of hiring additional professionals, particularly those of color, boosting outreach and programming across campus, and increasing campus-­wide awareness and visibility.

After the president and chancellor lost their jobs on Monday, the group issued new demands:

“Moving forward, Concerned Student 1950 demands an immediate meeting with the UM System Faculty Council, Board of Curators and the governor of the state of Missouri to discuss shared governance and create a system of holistic inclusion for all constituents,” said Marshall Allen, an original member of Concerned Student 1950, announced at the conference. Allen added that the group’s demands must be met “in totality.”

Here’s a breakdown of the “partially met” demands so far.