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Open to Debate

#152 - Trigger Warning: Are Safe Spaces Dangerous?

Open to Debate

Open to Debate

Education, Society & Culture, News, Government, Politics

4.52.1K Ratings

🗓️ 6 July 2018

⏱️ 52 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Debate: Trigger Warning: Safe Spaces are Dangerous Long hailed as bastions of intellectual development and ground zero for the free and spirited exchange of ideas, today's universities have come under attack by those who argue that a new generation of students and administrators are trading in academia's most cherished values for political correctness and inclusion. At the heart of this debate is the question of safe spaces, how we define them, and whether they aid or hinder intellectual inquiry. Deeply rooted in social justice movements of the past, these spaces promise a reprieve from bigotry and oppression by allowing today's students - the most culturally and racially diverse in history - the opportunity to express themselves in an empathetic environment. But to their critics, safe spaces pose a dire threat to free speech and undermine the resilience of a generation. Are safe spaces dangerously coddling young minds? Or are they a legitimate and necessary component of modern education? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:30.0

If you have attended a university in the past five years or so, or perhaps are about to, or live near one, or work in one,

0:39.0

then you know that one of the hottest issues during up campuses is the question of how best to respect and to accommodate the perspectives and also the sensitivities of students who belong to traditionally marginalized groups.

0:52.0

40 years ago it was fairly straightforward. Most students, most, came from basically similar backgrounds.

0:59.0

And we're not likely capable of saying anything in a classroom or in a dorm that would make another student in the group feel attacked or erased because of their membership in the group that he or she, usually he, came from.

1:11.0

But it is different when today's campuses are more diverse than ever before, at least in certain categories of identity.

1:19.0

For minority students, for LGBT students, for female students, should colleges provide so-called safe spaces, in which they know that they won't, while they're in those spaces, be exposed to speech that wounds in such an existential way.

1:34.0

And if so, how should those spaces be designed? Or does going that way, at all, come with more pitfalls than benefits?

1:42.0

Canceling out the ethos of free speech and robust discussion that most people would say is the key component of education.

1:50.0

Well, we think in all of this we have the makings of a debate. So let's have it. Yes or no to this statement, trigger warning, safe spaces are dangerous.

2:00.0

I'm John Donvan and I stand between two teams of two experts in this topic who will argue foreign against the motion, trigger warning, safe spaces are dangerous, as always our debate will go in three rounds, and then our audience at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel and Banff Canada will choose the winner.

2:16.0

And as always, if all goes well, civil discourse will also win.

2:20.0

So our motion is trigger warning, safe spaces are dangerous. Let's meet the debaters here first, the team arguing for the motion. Please welcome David Hudson Jr.

2:31.0

David, welcome to Intelligent Squared US. You're a professor of law at Vanderbilt. You are the author, co-author, co-editor of more than 40 books, including Let the Students Speak, a history of the fight for free expression in American schools.

2:46.0

You're also First Amendment Ombudsman for the New Zee Institute's First Amendment Center. That is a lot of First Amendment going on in your life.

2:53.0

So what sparked your interest first in free speech?

2:56.0

John, it was very personal. I uttered a phrase in one of my high school classes and was asked to leave. I got kicked out of class.

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