Maligning millennials 102: the safe spaces edition

Last Saturday, March 21, the New York Times ran an op-ed by Judith Shulevitz titled “In College and Hiding From Scary Ideas” -- naturally, several adults in my life immediately and gleefully passed it along to me.

Essentially, Shulevitz argues, in a rather condescending manner, that students today tend to self-infantilize. They allegedly avoid what she refers to in mocking quotes as “hostile environment[s]” and stubbornly remain unable to see past their own noses. Aside from being a series of incredible generalizations that the Timesshould be ashamed of allowing to slip past their editors, this part of her argument is abject nonsense that manages to sling mud at both victims of sexual assault and proponents of free speech simultaneously.

Safe spaces, which Shulevitz so easily dismisses, are created by and intended for people who know exactly the nature of the “violence of the word.” These people, these students, are not “hiding from scary ideas.” They are creating spaces where they are allowed to exist without apology and have productive conversations without being limited or stifled. Frankly, it’s pretty ludicrous to imply that, say, the literal victims of sexual assault who use these spaces are “hiding” from unfamiliar or terrifying ideas. For these people, safe spaces provide a temporary reprieve from the very real and very familiar threats and worries they experience in the rest of the world.

Shulevitz also misses another point: Safe spaces are a key part of dialogue within the political and social left. Within these spaces, people can elucidate their opinions and figure out where they stand without getting shut down by society-at-large, as well as avoid those conversations altogether for a time if they want to. Shulevitz uses the example of Charlie Hebdo journalist Zineb El Rhazoui, who recently spoke at the University of Chicago and was subsequently criticized by a student in the University’s paper for some of her comments, in order to illustrate that the students were unaware of El Rhazoui’s own need for a “safer space.” This strikes me as hypocritical -- that student was merely doing exactly the same thing that Shulevitz is doing: airing a criticism. Neither of them are attacking free speech as a concept. Of course, El Rhazoui should be able to express her opinions without putting her own life in jeopardy; however, this should not shield her, or indeed anyone, including her critics, from being held accountable for their words in the court of public dialogue.

Furthermore, the notion that everywhere outside safe spaces is therefore “unsafe [and] should be made safer” is a useless scare tactic designed to raise the ire of those who shout “free speech” at the slightest provocation. Making the world a “safer space” as a whole, all at once, is completely unrealistic; having pockets which are designated as “safe” is far more reasonable and detrimental to no one. Nobody is trying to destroy free speech. Nobody is trying to scrub difficult dialogue clean by way of erasing it completely -- I agree that just because certain conversations are potentially offensive and laden with problems doesn’t mean that they aren’t conversations worth having. I agree that “people ought to go to college to sharpen their wits and broaden their field of vision,” and I even agree that those who “want to change the world” must learn to see all sides of a question in order to persuade people to their causes.

What I disagree with are the ideas that these things run contrary to the very existence of “safe spaces” and that there is a phenomenon of “self-infantilization.” First of all, these spaces aren’t about hiding from “unfamiliar ideas” -- they are about getting a temporary reprieve from extremely familiar and disheartening ideas, as well as carving out, yes, a therapeutic space -- which does not mean a space in which educational conversation is forbidden. Secondly, Shulevitz’s emphasis on how weak and fragile today’s students are as compared to past generations makes her sound like the proverbial crotchety old man yelling at the neighbor kids to get off his lawn. While people love to pretend that millennials are incomprehensible, quiet and lazy, probably as it makes for relatively exciting fluff articles, the alleged generational behavior gap is notreal, and we really ought to be more careful before dismissing all college students as coddled by their parents to the point of uselessness. Before accusing us all of being so “overcome by [our] own fragility” that we need a fainting couch in every room, Shulevitz should make more of an effort to understand what safe spaces actually are and why students use them. Only after that can we all have a productive conversation -- I’m sure we can carve out a space for that dialogue.