Speech On College Campuses: Lukianoff And Haidt

The word choice in this article is clearly meant for a negative emotion. Words like violate, danger, and rape are used in attempt to bring out an uncomfortable feeling. For example, according to the article, Jeannie Suk wrote in the New Yorker about Harvard students telling their professors, ". . .not to teach rape law—or, in one case, even use the word violate (as in “that violates the law”) lest it cause students distress"(1,SomethingStr). The authors also use alarming instances in attempt to evoke emotion.

By writing “when the ideas, values, and speech of the other side are seen not just as wrong but as willfully aggressive toward innocent victims, it is hard to imagine the kind of mutual respect, negotiation, and compromise that are needed to make politics a positive-sum game”, the authors exhibit their feelings that perceiving differing opinions as aggressive is the wrong viewpoint. Connecting the disputes at college campuses to affecting politics develops a pressing feeling that something needs to change. Many people may view the culture at universities as something that doesn’t affect them or matter, and the writers of this article hope and try to change this outlook by constantly referencing how the increased amount of coddling and protectiveness will poorly affect the future of the students as well as the

" Common speech forms are changing, and school authorities are often a generation or two behind these changes. The speech was not offensive to the great majority of students, nor would it turn anyone's head if heard in a public forum. Writing for the

This section involves the examination of student culture and who or what made them the way they are today, as Edmundson seems to think that it is not the students’ fault for creating the culture in which they are ensnared. He has come up with this idea that students are “self-contained” and that “strong emotional display is forbidden” (7); but this is simply their “cool consumer culture” at work since the “specter of the uncool creates a subtle tyranny” (21, 8). Students are “desperate to blend in,” and with that in mind, they are neither passionate nor enthusiastic and are “nonassertive,” afraid to speak out and be aggressive (8). Edmundson continues this section by giving answers—his belief of what has happened. He goes from “persona ads” to sheltered childhoods to “future prospects” to “rebound teaching,” all of which circle back to his claim about his students not having an intellectual dedication to school (8, 10-11).

Campuses are a place where students all deserve to feel safe. Trigger warnings are a way to do this. Greg Lukianoff feels that trigger warnings coddle students minds and prevent them from growing and learning. In the interview for The Atlantic Lukianoff talks about how lack of a trigger warning made a student feel normal again for the first time in years, however this is often not the case for people with disorders like post-traumatic stress disorder. This is an example of how some people feel their freedom of speech is being compromised Triggered reactions are not only highly unpleasant, but can overtake one’s consciousness by causing a flashback, or a number of other things.

Have we, as a people, become so fearful to speak what is actually on our minds in the society that we live in? Are we scared that we may offend someone, and have our job taken away from us because of something we have said? In the article, “I'm a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me,” Edward Schlosser suggests that students are limiting how professor are able to lecture them. Schlosser is also worried that he may even have his job revoked from him if he slightly upset or offend any of his students. In our society, political correctness has reached an all-time high in the 21st century.

Article 1 Summary () Here, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, discuss how vindictive protectiveness hurts students on college campuses, challenging college’s ability to be a breathing ground for diverse critical thinking as opposed to protection from opposing ideas. Vindictive protectiveness is the protection of students from words and ideas on college campuses that may seem offensive or opposite; along with the punishment of people with these words regardless if it was accidental or of critical critique. They state “…students should [be taught] how to live in a world full of potential offenses.” They go on to hypothesize

Today’s college students are becoming more sensitized to the harshness of the outside world. Instead of learning to be resilient to others’ comments, they are being taught to take offense to any little word that could in some way be connected with a bad experience they might have had, and college administrators and professors are aiding this childish behavior. They are backing this movement to make adults into children. With this new movement to rid college campuses of any speech that may make anyone feel uncomfortable, students are being treated less like adults, and more like elementary children.

I believe that Powers makes some very valid points on how expression is censored in the more modern “liberal” era. I think that it is within everybody’s right to believe in whatever they want and have the right to express it. More importantly, what I have really taken away from this class is: just because you may think something is “offensive’, “obscene,” or “wrong” does not mean the person next to you may see it that way as well. As we discussed in class, in particular cases, who really is capable of deciding what is truly right or wrong? Who is this “reasonable person” to decide for all what is politically correct or not?

Though there are some exceptions, the young generation at large today has been brainwashed by politically correct culture. That culture shuns complex thought, and makes any dissent from the PC mainstream punishable by shunning, yelling, and attempts to silence. It runs rampant on college campuses, and Hofstra is no exception. Trigger warnings are unfortunately a major aspect of this culture, and there is little remedy other than to save the minds of those we can still sway. As best summarized by the American Association of University Professors, “The presumption that students need to be protected rather than challenged in a classroom is at once infantilizing and anti-intellectual”

In her article, she refers to college as a place to broaden knowledge, “It is, hopefully, a space where the student is challenged and sometimes frustrated and sometimes deeply upset, a place where the student's world expands and pushes them to reach the outer edges – not a place that contracts to meet the student exactly where they are” (Filipovic). From this previous statement, we can conclude that the unexpected in college challenges a student to push their knowledge; however, we should not adapt the learning process to meet students’ needs. A trigger warning serves as protection against a wide range of controversial categories. It is true multiple things could trigger an emotional response, even things as little as skulls, blood, or pregnancy. The discretion on whether a topic can send a student into emotional turmoil is unpredictable.

Is It Always Better To Speak Your Mind? Samuel Johnson said, “Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test (Johnson).” In the essay “Teacher Natalie Munroe Has a Right to Call Kids Lazy and Rude”, the freedom of speech and opinion of teachers are tested.

In addition, Andover could help students establish better ways to express their opinions by offering MLK day worships that focus on inclusive language to use and the impact that words have towards other people. Free speech should be used over hate speech during any given conversation, so Andover needs to aim and ensure that hate speech isn’t used on campus. This can also be achieved by trusting and training student leaders on campus about the difference between freedom of speech and hate speech, Andover’s campus culture could positively shift by having leaders who exemplify the kind of language that should be used on

Today you will be finding out about Political Correctness, Liberal and Human rights. The general purpose is to inform. The specific purpose is to define Political Correctness, Liberal and Human rights and inform to the audience to show how it’s got out of hand. The central idea Political Correctness is to avoid hurting socially disadvantaged people who have the right to freedom of speech. Liberal is to open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values.

What does it mean to be politically correct? Political correctness, often shortened to PC, is defined as agreeing with the idea that people should be careful not to use language or behave in a way that could offend a particular group of people. However, through generations of usage by the American government and the nation as a whole, it is obvious that this type of censorship is only a curtain for people to hide behind their real thoughts on “offensive” matters, such as sexuality and race. Many people argue that political correctness is a destructive force, one built on the foundational belief that by avoiding certain topics, the offensiveness of them will disappear entirely. It is because we as a nation are fearful of what we say, write, think, and especially of using the wrong words that may be denounced as insensitive, racist, sexist, or homophobic, that we give political correctness an unintentional, threatening power.