at America’s colleges and
universities. A movement is arising,
undirected and driven largely by
students, to scrub campuses clean of
words, ideas, and subjects that
might cause discomfort or give offense. Last
December, Jeannie Suk wrote in an online
article for The New Yorker about law
students asking her fellow professors at
Harvard not to teach rape law—or, in one
case, even use the word violate (as in “that
violates the law”) lest it cause students
distress. In February, Laura Kipnis, a
professor at Northwestern University, wrote
an essay in The Chronicle of Higher
Education describing a new campus politics
of sexual paranoia—and was then subjected
to a long investigation after students who
were offended by the article and by a tweet
she’d sent filed Title IX complaints against
her. In June, a professor protecting himself
with a pseudonym wrote an essay for Vox
describing how gingerly he now has to
teach. “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My
Liberal Students Terrify Me,” the headline
said. A number of popular comedians,
including Chris Rock, have stopped
performing on college campuses (see Caitlin
Flanagan’s article in this month’s issue).
Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher have publicly
condemned the oversensitivity of college
students, saying too many of them can’t
take a joke.
Two terms have risen quickly from
obscurity into common campus parlance.
Microaggressions are small actions or word
choices that seem on their face to have no
malicious intent but that are thought of as a
kind of violence nonetheless. For example,
by some campus guidelines, it is a
microaggression to ask an Asian American
or Latino American “Where were you
born?,” because this implies that he or she
is not a real American. Trigger warnings are
alerts that professors are expected to issue if
something in a course might cause a strong
emotional response. For example, some
students have called for warnings that
Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart describes
racial violence and that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s
The Great Gatsby portrays misogyny and
physical abuse, so that students who have
been previously victimized by racism or
domestic violence can choose to avoid these
works, which they believe might “trigger” a
recurrence of past trauma.
Some recent campus actions border on the
surreal. In April, at Brandeis University, the
Asian American student association sought
to raise awareness of microaggressions
against Asians through an installation on
the steps of an academic hall. The
installation gave examples of
microaggressions such as “Aren’t you
supposed to be good at math?” and “I’m
colorblind! I don’t see race.” But a backlash
arose among other Asian American students,
who felt that the display itself was a
microaggression. The association removed
the installation, and its president wrote an
e-mail to the entire student body
apologizing to anyone who was “triggered
or hurt by the content of the
microaggressions.”
This new climate is slowly being
institutionalized, and is affecting what can
be said in the classroom, even as a basis for
discussion. During the 2014–15 school year,
for instance, the deans and department
chairs at the 10 University of California
system schools were presented by
administrators at faculty leader-training
sessions with examples of microaggressions.
The list of offensive statements included:
“America is the land of opportunity” and “I
believe the most qualified person should get
the job.”"
Whole article is here:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/
This country is so screwed when these morons are actually running things
