Opposition to “safe spaces” on college campuses usually gets derided as racist and oblivious to the reality of higher education, but a journalism professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst made a forceful argument.
Shaheen Pasha warned of “safe spaces” as a fallacy that prevents students from preparing for reality and the “very real discourse they will face” upon graduation, according to the New Boston Post.
Pasha, a Pakistani-American Muslim who previously worked for Dow Jones, CNNMoney, and Reuters, voiced concern over the tendency that “safe space” rhetoric had to silence liberal values such as free speech.
“You cannot criticize a university or society for stomping on the rights of the people in one breath while trampling on the rights of the media — the watchdog of the people –in the next. It also shows an astonishing naivete on the part of the protest organizers that threaten to overshadow and undermine the very real and justified grievances that they have,” Pasha wrote for Medium.
Without an open, tolerant dialogue, confronting societal ills isn’t possible, and it can threaten the freedom and intellectual atmosphere that “safe spaces” advocates seek.
“But once the activism impedes on the rights of others and forces them to share your beliefs, well-intentioned liberalism can take on an ugly shade of authoritarianism,” she wrote.
A plurality of millennials already favor punishing offensive speech. And 49 percent of colleges substantially restrict freedom of speech on public campuses that are supposed to uphold Constitutional rights of free speech. In an effort to confront racism, sexism, and social oppression, many college students have shrugged off the liberal values that underpin individual rights and protect against bigotry. The trend is a cause for concern as the default position tends to be giving more power to institutions or the government to address those problems.
Without an open campus willing to acknowledge the dark side of reality, instead of shielding students from what they will face in the world, students aren’t receiving the education they need to prepare them for the future.
“Over the course of U.S. history, both the protections enshrined by the First Amendment and the larger ethos of free expression that pervades American culture have played a major role in every successful push that marginalized groups have made to secure civil rights, fight against prejudice, and move toward greater equality,” Conor Friedersdorf wrote for The Atlantic.
Without free expression, colleges don’t become safe spaces. They become echo chambers of illiberalism.
