LOL, Irena-- I think that your anecdote really nailed this one. Treating an opinion as though it were
hate-speech or a racial epithet of some kind is just bizarre.
It's
subjective. Ergo, it's free speech, and it's not "violence" of some sort to express a subjective opinion, though it may be the minority one.
The more concerning thing to me is the anecdote re: the classroom experience that another poster mentions. THAT kind of passive-aggressive controlling of an open intellectual environment is
very much "aggression" in my book. I'm sure that the student in question didn't see it that way. S/He was probably thinking only of him/herself-- which is sort of the point that the article is making, when you get right down to it.
It may be pursued in a way that indicates that the person conducting themselves that way is feeling persecuted or "revictimized," but make no mistake, they were simultaneously
controlling the rights to free speech and freedom of thought, for that matter within that classroom.
That's bad, bad news in a lot of ways. It goes beyond the scope of the article's rather astute observations, in fact, into a dulling of what the term "education" even means.
If open and frank-- maybe even "heated" discussion isn't welcome, then only ONE communication style is "acceptable" and only dogma is permissible... but that isn't critical discourse or learning. Not by a long shot.
Now I'm wondering if it's even okay if say that I "hate" Hitler.
Maybe I'm not allowed to
mention Hitler at all, given what an unpleasant sort of guy he turned out to be. The thing is, if we don't examine unpleasant history, aren't we neglecting to learn from it??
