Good morning to everyone except @fordnation. I promised to look into the choice of the university of chicago so, buckle up. New thread.
The University of Chicago statement effectively permits any speech to happen on campus (or, mandates) short of speech that's illegal (a high bar in the US, remember) but -- and this is my favourite -- it's main goal says the Economist, was to stop trigger warnings. Hahaha
In a letter in 2016, the U of Chicago admin took aim at "safe spaces" and: “Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called ‘trigger warnings’
This is, of course, the opposite of academic freedom. AF says that profs can add them, or not, in syllabi.
This is, of course, the opposite of academic freedom. AF says that profs can add them, or not, in syllabi.
That if a professor thinks that their course material warrants a trigger warning, it's up to them to add one. Imagine -- being so triggered by trigger warnings. These men are so tough: economist.com/united-states/…
Here is Forbes showing that @fordnation basically plagiarized how to implement this policy forbes.com/sites/tomlinds…
Trigger warning: the strawmen arguments in that piece are coming to kill you they're so aggressive
Republican lawmakers in the US have been pushing universities to either adopt the Chicago statement or this, from the libertarian think-tank Goldwater Inst., in case you didn't know where this was coming from goldwaterinstitute.org/campus-free-sp…
Here's the truth though -- of course, the Chicago statement allows the admin the latitude to restrict speech! : "The University may restrict expression that violates the law, that falsely defames a specific individual ...
... that constitutes a genuine threat or harassment, that unjustifiably invades substantial privacy or confidentiality interests , or that is otherwise directly incompatible with the functioning of the University." -- now that's a lot of latitude!
("falsely defames" is a funny way to identifying to the world that your institute of higher learning doesn't know what the word "defames" means)
Here's the statement, if you're up for a bunch of jargon-laden doublespeak freeexpression.uchicago.edu/sites/freeexpr…
To sum -- this policy simply gives more power to government to stop speech that it doesn't like (think Israeli Apartheid Week), more power to admin to arbitrarily stop events that they disagree with (civil disobedience, protest) and attempt to punish people who step out of line.
Remember kids: free speech is freedom from reprisals from the state. This is, again, a stunning attack on the free speech of anyone in the university of college community.
