Why students should be intellectually challenged:

[kiva]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/09/nyregion/yale-culturally-insensitive-halloween-costumes-free-speech.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur
No matter who you agree with regarding the whole Halloween costume controversy, this is exactly what faculty have been talking about regarding students rejecting free speech:

“You should step down!” one student shouted at Mr. Christakis, while demanding between expletives to know why Yale had hired him in the first place. “It is not about creating an intellectual space! It is not! Do you understand that? It is about creating a home here!”

Yes, Special Snowflake, college/university is about creating an intellectual space, a space for you to learn, to challenge and to be challenged. If you want to create a home, then create your own home.

[MisterP]

1. this combination of militant viciousness with sentimentalism is pretty widespread in America

it really drives the fundies, too: alarmingly, it reminds me most of Britain, 1914 ...

[kiva]

2. The challenges to ideas used to come from the fundamentalist side.

I had students who didn't want to read a particular book or watch a video because it was "against their religion" or contained sexual references or other controversial material...in college, mind you.

[MisterP]

5. no guessing her stance on Clinton vs. Sanders!

[liberal_at_heart]

3. People that refer to students as special snowflakes get put on my ignore list.

[Throd]

4. How would you describe someone with such a mentality?

[kiva]

6. OK

[ryan_cats]

8. So

So as not to offend any ethnic studies majors, I use the term, delicate flower. No need to be nasty.

[Dr. Strange]

7. It's not just students. Faculty need to be reminded of it too sometimes.

At Missouri, communications professor Melissa Click went to Facebook to try to get media interested in what was happening on the MU campus. When student reporters showed up, she tried to get them to leave, saying, “Hey who wants to help me get this reporter out of here. I need some muscle over here!”

[Throd]

9. What the hell? That was seventeen types of trainwreck.

Not having your beliefs challenged makes it hard to defend them.

[X_Digger]

10. Oh fer fuck's sake.

There is no right to not be offended. (Sadly I think this novel idea needs to be extended to more than the college aged.)