PC culture rears its ugly head
Students risk losing ability to handle debate
Aonce-common phrase, “political correctness,” appeared the other day on, of all places, the front page of The New York Times. It was a surprising revival. The term blossomed in universities across North America in the 1990s and early 2000s, but faded a few years ago largely because of overuse. Yet there it was, given a vibrant new life in a Times headline: “University of Chicago Strikes Back Against Campus Political Correctness.”
While the term “political correctness” has mostly disappeared, its meaning has not. In its best days, it was always an ironic expression of dogmatic liberal opinions, especially when dealing with racial, religious and sexual bias. The attitude itself survives, particularly on campuses and in an increasingly influential form. At its worst, it instils in students the fear that they will fail to operate within acceptable principles.
Political correctness is the epithet aimed at the self-righteous who are painfully careful whenever they refer to victims of oppression. In recent years, these same feelings have been used to eliminate every controversial idea on college campuses. This attitude has led to the belief that students should not have to read material or hear words that might upset them. Professors sometimes use “trigger warnings” to steer students away from contentious content.
This widespread situation has led the University of Chicago to expressly declare that it wants to separate itself from timorous, selfsatisfied discourse. The dean of students, John Ellison, has written to the freshmen in the incoming class of 2020, informing them that UChicago doesn’t go along with certain popular trends.
“Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called trigger warnings, we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own,” Ellison wrote. “Freedom of expression does not mean the freedom to harass or threaten others.”
Among the students who commented on the letter, one wrote: “FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY....... A College that fights back.” There were those, however, who suggested that Ellison was trying to appease donors to the university. It’s been reported that some of them, appalled by the atmosphere on campus, have withheld their grants.
Three embarrassing incidents at the university demonstrated the problem. In February, Anita Alvarez, the Cook County state’s attorney, was forced to end a lecture because members of Black Lives Matter chanted and waved signs while she was talking. On the following day, university police had to break up a riot when Bassem Eid, a critic of antiIsrael boycotts, was speaking. In April, members of the Armenian Students Association interrupted a talk by a scholar who denies the Armenian genocide.
The Ellison letter grew out of a faculty committee on freedom of expression, chaired by Geoffrey R. Stone, a law professor. Stone believes, “It is not the proper role of the university to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable or even deeply offensive.”
When certain students at the University of Chicago deal with conflict, they forget about the idea of free speech. Freedom is less immediately satisfying than mob rule. And if that’s true (even a little bit true) at a university with a great tradition, the home of Milton Friedman and Allan Bloom, what can it be like at lesssophisticated institutions? And what does it say about society in general?
It suggests that the North American world has produced a multitude, including many young people, who can’t manage the art of debate and don’t want to. Like Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, they are so sure they are right, that they believe the other side must be totally wrong — so why listen to them?
And students often can get away with enforcing their narrow view, at least in the short term. Universities often tolerate even outlandish abuse of their principles, merely to keep the peace and avoid tiresome bureaucratic procedures.
Facebook and Twitter have become powerful teachers. You can learn from them that you handle disagreement by pouring such violent enmity on your opponents that they’ll withdraw rather than bear more of it.
The University of Chicago’s mild-mannered protest against uncivil behaviour on its own campus may not impress the students. But it’s at least a start. Many universities will have to go down the same path before education recovers from political correctness and related disasters of recent years.
FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION DOES NOT MEAN THE FREEDOM TO HARASS OR THREATEN OTHERS.