Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion The Atlantic takes on post-secondary PC/coddling

A provocative cover letter sent last week to entering University of Chicago freshmen along with a book on academic freedom started the school year with a bang, when the respected college dean of students John Ellison declared:

we do not support so called “trigger warnings,” we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual “safe spaces” where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.

The letter instantly lit up the news from Yahoo to the New York Times. Some educators found its pre-emptive language and confident voice refreshing and constructive. Others, including Wesleyan University president Michael S. Roth, dismissed it as a donor-oriented publicity stunt.

In fact, Chicago was distancing itself from last year’s destructive campus antics. The university is known for producing fine minds versed in Great Books and the inheritance of Western civilization. Many consider it to be the nation’s most rigorously intellectual undergraduate college. In 2015, faculty members issued the widely admired Report by the Committee on Freedom of Expression, a statement that later served as a model for policies adopted at Purdue, Princeton, Columbia, and other major universities.