FIRE Takes on Campus Speech Codes

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE)
announced its plans to file lawsuits against any university with an
inappropriate, unconstitutional speech code, as
Robby Soave noted here earlier this week:

“Universities’ stubborn refusal to relinquish their speech codes
must not be tolerated,” said FIRE President Greg Lukianoff during a
press conference.

For now, suits have been filed against Ohio University, Iowa
State University, Chicago State University, and Citrus College in
California. These universities have all trampled students’ free
speech rights, according to FIRE.

Lukianoff explained that FIRE would not hesitate to expand the
suits until all universities abandon their speech codes, which were
ruled unconstitutional decades ago but have endured at more than 50
percent of colleges, according to the foundation’s research.

In May, Reason TV talked with Lukianoff about another free
speech battle emerging on campuses across the country: mandatory
“trigger warnings” on material that might trigger memories of past
traumas in students. Watch the video below. Original text is
beneath.

Orginally published on May 8, 2014.

“It’s really not anyone else’s business to tell someone when
they are mentally and emotionally ready to deal with things,” says
Bailey Loverin, a University of Santa Barbara (UCSB) junior who
authored a resolution to mandate that professors issue “trigger
warnings” before presenting material that might trigger memories of
past traumas in students.

Feminist and social justice blogs popularized the concept of the
trigger warning, with writers encouraging each other to label posts
that might trigger flashbacks to sexual assault or domestic abuse.
As the popularity, and scope, of the trigger warning idea grew,
some bloggers began listing potential triggers, ranging from rape
and violence and suicide to snakes and needles and even “small
holes.”

Oberlin College attracted some media attention when its Office
of Equity Concerns posted, and later removed, a trigger warning
guide advising professors to avoid triggering topics such as
racism, colonialism, and sexism when possible. The memo also
suggests introducing discussions of potentially triggering works
with language such as this: We are reading this work in spite of
the author’s racist frameworks because his work was foundational to
establishing the field of anthropology, and because I think
together we can challenge, deconstruct, and learn from his
mistakes.

Loverin says that her trigger warning resolution is much more
narrowly tailored to protect sufferers of post-traumatic stress
disorder (PTSD). But she also goes a step further than anyone has
at Oberlin by proposing that trigger warnings in the classroom be
mandated.

“I don’t feel that it’s a problem asking for this to be
mandated,” says Loverin. “You’re always going to have someone
that’s going to argue, ‘Why? This is ridiculous. I shouldn’t have
to do this because I don’t feel it. Why should anyone else?'”

Loverin’s resolution passed the student-run Academic Senate and
now awaits review by the faculty legislative body. Greg Lukianoff,
President of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
(FIRE), worries that mandated trigger warnings would set a
troubling precedent on campus. He points to an incident that
occured on the UCBS campus only days after the resolution passed
wherein an associate professor of feminist studies stole a sign
from pro-life protesters and then pushed one of them away when she
tried to take the sign back. The professor’s defense?

“What she argued was that the display was triggering,” says
Lukianoff. “It’s a very unforunate part of human nature. If you
give us an excuse to shut down speech with which we disagree, we’re
very quick to see it as an opportunity.”

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