Safe spaces
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|THE REMARKER |life| September 23, 2016 |
UCHICAGO SAFE SPACES
Safe spaces
A
WITH A LETTER TO ALL INCOMING STUDENTS BANNING ‘SAFE SPACES’ AND ‘TRIGGER WORDS,’ THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO HAS SPARKED A FIRESTORM OF NATIONAL DEBATE.
shton Hashemipour ‘16 grabbed the white envelope out of his mailbox, eyes lighting up at the familiar maroon and black University of Chicago crest. He ripped open the envelope and began to read. Welcome and congratulations on your acceptance to the College at the University of Chicago. He reads quickly, scanning the body of the letter until his eyes stop at two foreign terms. “Safe spaces?” “Trigger words?”
Slowly, Hashemipour re-reads the paragraph. “We do not support so-called ‘trigger words,’ and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from perspectives at odds with their own.” Little does he know at the time, but the letter sitting on his kitchen table, written by the dean of students, will go on to ignite a national debate. Should schools and universities shy away from challenging students’ opinions and bringing up difficult topics? Or does the sheltering or “baby-proofing” of students’ educations cripple them as adults? “A university should be a place where your ideas are challenged the most,” Hashemipour said. “There should never be the option to retreat to a physical space where completely open discourse is discouraged.” The letter addresses the expectation of both university and high school classrooms to exist as cushioned chambers that protect students from potentially offensive or challenging points of view, raising the question: How should teachers balance perspectives to ensure that students understand views that oppose their own? LYNNE WEBER Supports open discussion in the classroom
According to History Department Chair David Fisher, the issues of trigger warnings and safe spaces are almost nonexistent in classrooms outside of the United States. Obviously, diversity and differing opinions are not uniquely American concepts, but to Fisher, who has worked for the last 20 years outside of the United States and last taught in Malaysia, it seems that classrooms outside the U.S. don’t rely on the concepts of safe spaces and trigger warnings to engage in trans-cultural discussion. “Many people attribute sensitivity to the cultural diversity of America,” Fisher said. “But in my classroom in Malaysia, 18 out of 20 students were foreign, and there were never trigger warnings or safe spaces.”
LIFE
In fact, these concepts were so unfamiliar that Fisher believes the mention of such ideas would have resulted in both confusion and amusement among his students. “If I had mentioned trigger warnings or safe spaces in Malaysia,” Fisher said, “it would have elicited laughter.” Instead of tiptoeing around hotly-debated topics for fear of controversy, Fisher views volatile discussion as a cornerstone in the process of learning, going so far as to define learning as “the process of vigorous debate.” In his classroom, Fisher strives to inspire his students to tackle the tough topics and expose themselves to the differing opinions that are necessary in the process of developing one’s own views. “That should be all of our goals,” Fisher said. “We are here to grow as thinkers, and we need to be prodded, we need to be pushed, we need to consider views that are not necessarily views that we have grown up with.” ike Fisher, Middle School humanities instructor Jason Lange acknowledges a similar lack of these issues in his own world travels. Now in his third year on campus, Lange previously taught at the Hong Kong International School in China. “Those weren’t really buzzwords that I had heard before,” Lange said. “I did my time from 2012-2014, and those were not issues that we talked about.” Lange’s class was composed of a similarly heterogeneous mixture of students, “60 percent foreign nationalist, 40 percent Hong Kongese.” And like Fisher, Lange never ran into an issue with trigger warnings and safe spaces in his international teaching experience. “This is something that’s never really come up,” Lange said. “In fact, I understand the premise, but I had never heard trigger-warning before U[niversity of] Chicago. Educational institutions need to strike that balance between being a place for people to test their boundaries but at the same time feel comfortable talking about what they need to talk about.” As a middle school instructor, Lange
L
does have to cater some discussions to the level of sophistication and social maturity of 11 and 12-year-olds. Even so, he does encourage his students to grow both as people and students as they explore dual perspectives on familiar topics that will further their development in the future. “I do think as people get older they should form an opinion,” Lange said. “It’s dangerous to waver in the middle. The best way to learn about supporting something is to have an honest discussion, and I would hope that by the time students are university-age they can have those discussions and still have enough respect for their counterparts to sit and listen.” As students move into high school, English classes such as those taught by Trustee Master Teaching Chair Lynne Weber further encourage dynamic group discussion. With more than 31 years of teaching English and literature courses, Weber has dealt with the results of sensitivity to complex issues many times before, just in a different form — the reluctance of students, parents and school districts to approach great works of literature because of controversial and disturbing subject matter. Weber believes that the emotional and distinctly human experiences in these works are important in shaping one’s outlook on the world, emphasizing that attempting to censor or provide “trigger warnings” for books would undermine the whole purpose of the books. “The whole function of great works of literature,” Weber said, “is to challenge your beliefs, to shake you up, to show you a different way of living or a different point of view, or to take you through some tremendous scenes of suffering with a vicarious experience that produces empathy.” Alongside her role as a Master Teacher, Weber has taught for 16 years as a senior lecturer at the University of Texas at Dallas, teaching the final class taken before an aspiring English or literature teacher begins to teach. Weber acknowledges that some students may sincerely not be able to revisit a memory or experience, and as an instructor of future instructors, she suggests that teachers tell the students to address the problems individually, instead of limiting the learning experience. “I think [a student approaching the teacher] is a way to do it without gagging yourself as a professor and putting tape over your mouth,” Weber said. “There might be situations in your life that you might not be able to revisit, psychologically.”
STORY DAVIS BAILEY, REECE RABIN PHOTO FRANK THOMAS
LIFE DOESN’T HAVE TRIGGER WARNINGS —Lynne Weber
Weber finds a school or university classroom is the perfect safe space to have volatile and complex conversations.—“It’s the perfect place, in itself a safe space,” Weber said. “You don’t need an extraneous safe space. The English classroom is the safe space.” All three teachers, though they instruct different age groups and classes, agree on one common point: discussion and engagement is crucial to developing as both a student and a person. In particular, Fisher encourages students to not only listen to different views, but to wholeheartedly throw oneself tenaciously into debates revolving around alternate perspectives and opinions. “Being a community of scholars that believes that debate is important, this creates all kind of positive spillover effects,” Fisher said. “I see this as a great opportunity to channel that interest and engagement and energy into something that is productive in both class discussions and debate.”
|THE REMARKER |life| September 23, 2016 |
UCHICAGO SAFE SPACES
Safe spaces
A
WITH A LETTER TO ALL INCOMING STUDENTS BANNING ‘SAFE SPACES’ AND ‘TRIGGER WORDS,’ THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO HAS SPARKED A FIRESTORM OF NATIONAL DEBATE.
shton Hashemipour ‘16 grabbed the white envelope out of his mailbox, eyes lighting up at the familiar maroon and black University of Chicago crest. He ripped open the envelope and began to read. Welcome and congratulations on your acceptance to the College at the University of Chicago. He reads quickly, scanning the body of the letter until his eyes stop at two foreign terms. “Safe spaces?” “Trigger words?”
Slowly, Hashemipour re-reads the paragraph. “We do not support so-called ‘trigger words,’ and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from perspectives at odds with their own.” Little does he know at the time, but the letter sitting on his kitchen table, written by the dean of students, will go on to ignite a national debate. Should schools and universities shy away from challenging students’ opinions and bringing up difficult topics? Or does the sheltering or “baby-proofing” of students’ educations cripple them as adults? “A university should be a place where your ideas are challenged the most,” Hashemipour said. “There should never be the option to retreat to a physical space where completely open discourse is discouraged.” The letter addresses the expectation of both university and high school classrooms to exist as cushioned chambers that protect students from potentially offensive or challenging points of view, raising the question: How should teachers balance perspectives to ensure that students understand views that oppose their own? LYNNE WEBER Supports open discussion in the classroom
According to History Department Chair David Fisher, the issues of trigger warnings and safe spaces are almost nonexistent in classrooms outside of the United States. Obviously, diversity and differing opinions are not uniquely American concepts, but to Fisher, who has worked for the last 20 years outside of the United States and last taught in Malaysia, it seems that classrooms outside the U.S. don’t rely on the concepts of safe spaces and trigger warnings to engage in trans-cultural discussion. “Many people attribute sensitivity to the cultural diversity of America,” Fisher said. “But in my classroom in Malaysia, 18 out of 20 students were foreign, and there were never trigger warnings or safe spaces.”
LIFE
In fact, these concepts were so unfamiliar that Fisher believes the mention of such ideas would have resulted in both confusion and amusement among his students. “If I had mentioned trigger warnings or safe spaces in Malaysia,” Fisher said, “it would have elicited laughter.” Instead of tiptoeing around hotly-debated topics for fear of controversy, Fisher views volatile discussion as a cornerstone in the process of learning, going so far as to define learning as “the process of vigorous debate.” In his classroom, Fisher strives to inspire his students to tackle the tough topics and expose themselves to the differing opinions that are necessary in the process of developing one’s own views. “That should be all of our goals,” Fisher said. “We are here to grow as thinkers, and we need to be prodded, we need to be pushed, we need to consider views that are not necessarily views that we have grown up with.” ike Fisher, Middle School humanities instructor Jason Lange acknowledges a similar lack of these issues in his own world travels. Now in his third year on campus, Lange previously taught at the Hong Kong International School in China. “Those weren’t really buzzwords that I had heard before,” Lange said. “I did my time from 2012-2014, and those were not issues that we talked about.” Lange’s class was composed of a similarly heterogeneous mixture of students, “60 percent foreign nationalist, 40 percent Hong Kongese.” And like Fisher, Lange never ran into an issue with trigger warnings and safe spaces in his international teaching experience. “This is something that’s never really come up,” Lange said. “In fact, I understand the premise, but I had never heard trigger-warning before U[niversity of] Chicago. Educational institutions need to strike that balance between being a place for people to test their boundaries but at the same time feel comfortable talking about what they need to talk about.” As a middle school instructor, Lange
L
does have to cater some discussions to the level of sophistication and social maturity of 11 and 12-year-olds. Even so, he does encourage his students to grow both as people and students as they explore dual perspectives on familiar topics that will further their development in the future. “I do think as people get older they should form an opinion,” Lange said. “It’s dangerous to waver in the middle. The best way to learn about supporting something is to have an honest discussion, and I would hope that by the time students are university-age they can have those discussions and still have enough respect for their counterparts to sit and listen.” As students move into high school, English classes such as those taught by Trustee Master Teaching Chair Lynne Weber further encourage dynamic group discussion. With more than 31 years of teaching English and literature courses, Weber has dealt with the results of sensitivity to complex issues many times before, just in a different form — the reluctance of students, parents and school districts to approach great works of literature because of controversial and disturbing subject matter. Weber believes that the emotional and distinctly human experiences in these works are important in shaping one’s outlook on the world, emphasizing that attempting to censor or provide “trigger warnings” for books would undermine the whole purpose of the books. “The whole function of great works of literature,” Weber said, “is to challenge your beliefs, to shake you up, to show you a different way of living or a different point of view, or to take you through some tremendous scenes of suffering with a vicarious experience that produces empathy.” Alongside her role as a Master Teacher, Weber has taught for 16 years as a senior lecturer at the University of Texas at Dallas, teaching the final class taken before an aspiring English or literature teacher begins to teach. Weber acknowledges that some students may sincerely not be able to revisit a memory or experience, and as an instructor of future instructors, she suggests that teachers tell the students to address the problems individually, instead of limiting the learning experience. “I think [a student approaching the teacher] is a way to do it without gagging yourself as a professor and putting tape over your mouth,” Weber said. “There might be situations in your life that you might not be able to revisit, psychologically.”
STORY DAVIS BAILEY, REECE RABIN PHOTO FRANK THOMAS
LIFE DOESN’T HAVE TRIGGER WARNINGS —Lynne Weber
Weber finds a school or university classroom is the perfect safe space to have volatile and complex conversations.—“It’s the perfect place, in itself a safe space,” Weber said. “You don’t need an extraneous safe space. The English classroom is the safe space.” All three teachers, though they instruct different age groups and classes, agree on one common point: discussion and engagement is crucial to developing as both a student and a person. In particular, Fisher encourages students to not only listen to different views, but to wholeheartedly throw oneself tenaciously into debates revolving around alternate perspectives and opinions. “Being a community of scholars that believes that debate is important, this creates all kind of positive spillover effects,” Fisher said. “I see this as a great opportunity to channel that interest and engagement and energy into something that is productive in both class discussions and debate.”
