People Who Are Offended

I have noted with much disgust how frequently people get offended by just about anything. There seems to be an ultra politically correct movement, especially in academia, that tries to censor peoples' speech and writing by claiming that anything they disagree with is offensive. The root of this movement seems to be that colleges, once the bastion of the rich cultural elite, have opened up their doors to the general populace. This is undoubtedly a good thing, as an educated populace tends to be a more affluent and happy populace. But because college used to be a place for the rich to rub elbows during their formative years, colleges are uniquely sensitive to concerns of one group dominating and intimidating another. Because colleges want to have a diverse student population, they try to censor speech and behavior in the name of inclusiveness.

The problem here is that I live in a country (the USA) where freedom of speech is highly valued. So much so that we enshrined it in the first amendment to our constitution. More over, academic institutions are nominally dedicated to the craft of educating their students in a variety of subjects and preparing them to go out into the real world and succeed in whatever endeavor they choose to pursue. The real world is not academia, and with the exception of certain harassing behavior which our laws protect people from, it does not shelter people from views they don't like. Being offended is irrelevant unless the speech or action also offends the law. And yet our academic institutions continue to coddle this anti-social behavior within their student bodies. Inclusiveness is not irreconcilable with free speech, and academic institutions would do well to educate their students about this.

A good example of this is a recent kerfuffle at Wellesley College over a statue of a sleep walking man in his underwear. Link. Within hours of its installation there was a petition circulating to have it removed. The petition claimed that the statue had: "become a source of apprehension, fear, and triggering thoughts regarding sexual assault for many members of our campus community." The aim of this is obvious, to suppress the artistic speech embodied by the statue in the name of those who it offends. And while I agree that the statue is creepy looking, to start making allusions to sexual assault seems a little far fetched. More over, the complaints betray how thin skinned the community at Wellesley is. How are these people going to function in the real world if a statue makes them fear assault? Not well.

If colleges are going to remain bastions of learning and productive debate, students are going to have to be confronted with views they do not agree with, argued passionately by people who do. To silence the voices of dissent so that there is no real dialogue or debate is to do a disservice to the student population and to tacitly endorse censorship. It robs students of the chance to participate in a constructive debate, it robs them of the ability to exercise their critical thinking skills and develop coping mechanisms that they will need to function in a professional environment.