It seems like not a week goes by when I don’t hear of some university or another and its battle with matters of cultural, religious or sexual sensitivity.
First it was the seminars at a small liberal arts school in America, where kids learned using the n-word is never acceptable, and that using the term “you guys” could be considered offensive, as it leaves out women. Then there was the University of Toronto psychology professor making waves for his refusal to use gender neutral pronouns. Or you hear of university speakers getting canceled because their viewpoints are controversial, or “trigger warnings” about course material that might be upsetting.
Last week, it was a Queen’s University costume party, with students coming dressed up as Arab sheiks, Buddhist monks and Mexican prisoners and more, that was decried as “shockingly racist” and which fell under investigation by Queen’s University. Could some people consider such a costume party tasteless and offensive? Absolutely. But is it really worthy of national news coverage and the outrage it has received, the mea culpas from the university, even if the event took place off-campus?
Sure, schools and universities – just like work places – need to provide safe, inclusive spaces where people feel comfortable being in and working. But I worry that universities’ drive to create safer, more inclusive places will have the reverse effect, with people getting more and more irritated about the constraints on free speech and political correctness and lashing out instead. This was obvious with the American election, that people embraced president-elect Donald Trump’s habit of calling it as he saw it, political correctness be damned.
Most of us feel comfortable living in so-called “echo chambers” – where the views we hear are similar to our own. This is partly why fake news has exploded on social media – it doesn’t really matter what the truth is, so long as what you are seeing or reading mirrors your own way of seeing the world.
University is supposed to be a place where people explore freedom in thinking, and push the boundaries of their imagination and limited ways of seeing the world. You simply can’t do that in an echo chamber, you can’t do that without healthy debate and listening to people’s views that are completely opposed to your own, and you can’t do it if you shut down every mode of thinking and action that could be considered potentially offensive to someone else.
While we hear about children in care dying in horrendous conditions, when we hear reports of hate crimes, when we hear of ethnic and religious minorities being slaughtered in places like Myanmar and the Middle East, I think there are more reasons to get mad and vocal, and speak out, than against the “shockingly racist” behavior of clueless university students. Let’s save the outrage for matters that truly deserve it.
