The New Intolerance of Student Activism

[Bonobo]

We have a problem on the "Left".

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/the-new-intolerance-of-student-activism-at-yale/414810/?utm_source=SFFB

A fight over Halloween costumes at Yale has devolved into an effort to censor dissenting views.

Professor Nicholas Christakis lives at Yale, where he presides over one of its undergraduate colleges. His wife Erika, a lecturer in early childhood education, shares that duty. They reside among students and are responsible for shaping residential life. And before Halloween, some students complained to them that Yale administrators were offering heavy-handed advice on what Halloween costumes to avoid.

Erika Christakis reflected on the frustrations of the students, drew on her scholarship and career experience, and composed an email inviting the community to think about the controversy through an intellectual lens that few if any had considered. Her message was a model of relevant, thoughtful, civil engagement.

For her trouble, a faction of students are now trying to get the couple removed from their residential positions, which is to say, censured and ousted from their home on campus. Hundreds of Yale students are attacking them, some with hateful insults, shouted epithets, and a campaign of public shaming. In doing so, they have shown an illiberal streak that flows from flaws in their well-intentioned ideology.

....

In “The Coddling of the American Mind,” Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt argued that too many college students engage in “catastrophizing,” which is to say, turning common events into nightmarish trials or claiming that easily bearable events are too awful to bear. After citing examples, they concluded, “smart people do, in fact, overreact to innocuous speech, make mountains out of molehills, and seek punishment for anyone whose words make anyone else feel uncomfortable.”

What Yale students did next vividly illustrates that phenomenon.

[Doctor_J]

1. outstanding article. good find, bonobo

Faculty writes a polite email suggesting students be allowed to choose their own Halloween costumes. PC mob demands faculty member and her husband leave the campus. This is where hate radio get their material.

[potone]

2. Yes, this is outrageous.

A similar thing is happening with so-called "trigger warnings" in which faculty are supposed to include these warnings in their syllabi if the course material includes anything that could be considered upsetting to anyone. This is political correctness run amok. What these students don't realize is that it is not the job of universities to protect them from adult life, but to prepare them for it, and that includes being exposed to different ways of thinking and ideas that they may find troubling.

[HuckleB]

3. Recommended.

[cprise]

4. On the one hand, this reminds me of DU these days

At least the appearance of overreacting to a situation.

OTOH, I'm certain there are 'over the line' or 'beyond offensive' or 'unacceptable' themes which a student could cook up that would get them disciplined. I detect more than a whiff of a double-standard on the faculty's part.

A big problem with PC is that there is still a core culture and establishment which would rather cut its own throat than admit the 'PC rainbow' sensibilities into their concepts of basic civility.

[magical thyme]

5. great. the up and coming "elites" to control our fate.

According to The Washington Post, “several students in Silliman said they cannot bear to live in the college anymore.” These are young people who live in safe, heated buildings with two Steinway grand pianos, an indoor basketball court, a courtyard with hammocks and picnic tables, a computer lab, a dance studio, a gym, a movie theater, a film-editing lab, billiard tables, an art gallery, and four music practice rooms. But they can’t bear this setting that millions of people would risk their lives to inhabit because one woman wrote an email that hurt their feelings?

Another Silliman resident declared in a campus publication, “I have had to watch my friends defend their right to this institution. This email and the subsequent reaction to it have interrupted their lives. I have friends who are not going to class, who are not doing their homework, who are losing sleep, who are skipping meals, and who are having breakdowns.” One feels for these students. But if an email about Halloween costumes has them skipping class and suffering breakdowns, either they need help from mental-health professionals or they’ve been grievously ill-served by debilitating ideological notions they’ve acquired about what ought to cause them pain.

The student next described what she thinks residential life at Yale should be. Her words: “I don’t want to debate. I want to talk about my pain.” In fact, students were perfectly free to talk about their pain. Some felt entitled to something more, and that is what prolonged the debate—not a faculty member who’d rather have been anywhere else.

As students saw it, their pain ought to have been the decisive factor in determining the acceptability of the Halloween email. They thought their request for an apology ought to have been sufficient to secure one. Who taught them that it is righteous to pillory faculty for failing to validate their feelings, as if disagreement is tantamount to disrespect? Their mindset is anti-diversity, anti-pluralism, and anti-tolerance, a seeming data-point in favor of April Kelly-Woessner’s provocative argument that “young people today are less politically tolerant than their parents’ generation.”