The argument against campus safe spaces is obvious. Just about every college conservative can recite some very persuasive iteration of it in their sleep.
For perspective on how widely accepted that argument is, even President Barack Obama embraced it on more than one occasion over the course of his time in the White House.
During an event at the University of Chicago last week, progressive pundit Van Jones jumped on the bandwagon, telling students, “I don’t want you to be safe ideologically. I don’t want you to be safe emotionally. I want you to be strong — that’s different. I’m not going to pave the jungle for you. Put on some boots and learn how to deal with adversity.”
“I’m not going to take all the weights out of the gym,” he said. “That’s the whole point of the gym.”
As conservatives have argued for years, Jones knows that learning to cope with philosophical disagreement and discomfort builds mental and emotional strength.
Separately, Jones also criticized college students for lacking perspective. “[My parents] dealt with fire hoses, they dealt with dogs, they dealt with beatings. You can’t deal with a mean tweet?” he asked.
This is all helpful, especially so coming from the lips of a liberal like Jones.
But in this same critique of safe space culture, Jones said something much more interesting.
Addressing his “liberal colleagues” on campuses, Jones said, “You are creating a kind of liberalism that the minute it crosses the street into the real world, that is not just useless, but obnoxious and dangerous.”
That observation has much deeper implications.
From Obama to Jones, many on the Left have been reasonable enough to stand up for the free exchange of ideas. But, here, Jones touched on something different.
Campuses are incubating a breed of liberalism that is not capable of withstanding the scrutiny of the outside world. This strain of liberalism lives in a generation of young progressives who are pushing the Democratic Party further towards its fringes, damaging its appeal with moderate Americans.
It is brazenly censorious and increasingly impervious to the rational criticisms that facilitate growth and improvement.
For liberals, this is more of a problem than the mocking headlines on conservative blogs.
The type of liberalism currently being bred on college campuses, and installed in its next generation of leaders, could pose an existential threat to the Democratic Party.
Just as young people need to absorb dissent to develop, so too do our institutions.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
