“Academic Freedom”: Whose Line Is This Anyway?

Jay Ellison, Dean of Students at University of Chicago, welcomed the Class of 2020 with a letter emphasizing the university’s commitment to “freedom of inquiry and expression.” He said:

Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called “trigger warnings,” we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual “safe spaces” where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.

I will admit to being one of those people who clenches her jaw whenever I hear “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces,” not because conversations around student safety are unnecessary, but, rather, because I know I am likely about to be subjected to one of two conversations:

1. Millennial students are entitled cry-babies, reductive thinkers, and thoroughly unfamiliar with what a university should be, or
2. The Powers That Be in universities are purposefully oppressive, mastermind schemers of Bad Things, and thoroughly unfamiliar with what a university should be.

Full disclosure: in general, I am more likely to side with students. Up until this past spring, I was a university student and often publicly and in no uncertain words criticized the administration of my university. But I’m also frustrated with the terms by which we’ve chosen to have this conversation; in my opinion, to advocate for “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” cedes too much ground to the university Powers That Be.

Why?

“Safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” sound to me exactly like the kind of non-meaning corporate lingo that would emerge from a HR department. It is language meant to diminish risk of litigation and to assuage any feelings of discomfort. And the proposals associated with such language are corporate proposals: new buildings and offices aimed at improving the Student Experience™, shiny poster campaigns that double as admissions material, and newly-hired “Student Life Managers.”

This is not to say that the advocacy for “safe spaces” or “trigger warnings” comes from a insincere or imprudent place. Sexual and racial violences are felt experiences of many students and should certainly not be dismissed. Students understandably feel exploited in an environment of intense labor and high cost, especially because the advertised benefits of a college education are not immediate or certain. And the university Powers That Be are not doing their part to be as open and communicative as they could be about their failures in addressing such issues because to do so could threaten their position on U.S. News & World Report’s rankings.

But, I believe, if universities were to facilitate “safe spaces” and require “trigger warnings” in the curriculum, none of the problems we’re facing today would necessarily be solved. In fact, “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” would likely become another instance of student activism being transformed into a panel on the “why you should apply to [and pay unreasonable tuition at] our college!” brochure. (“Our students change the world for a better tomorrow — some through private equity, some through being pains in our ass!”)

The frustration that many undergraduate and graduate students have with universities — including mounting student debt, sexual violence, the commodification of diversity, the lack of tenure-track jobs, among other things — arises from the corporatism undergirding many universities. In a thoughtful and scathing article for New York Times Magazine, Fredrik deBoer writes:

It’s not unheard-of for colleges now to employ more senior administrators than professors. There are, of course, essential functions that many university administrators perform, but such an imbalance is absurd — try imagining a high school with more vice principals than teachers. This legion of bureaucrats enables a world of pitiless surveillance; no segment of campus life, no matter how small, does not have some administrator who worries about it. Piece by piece, every corner of the average campus is being slowly made congruent with a single, totalizing vision. […] Bent into place by a small army of apparatchiks, the contemporary American college is slowly becoming as meticulously art-directed and branded as a J. Crew catalog. Like Niketown or Disneyworld, your average college campus now leaves the distinct impression of a one-party state.

That is to say, universities are more interested in building a cohesive brand than they are in creating and sustaining a freely intellectual and social space. To build this university-brand requires more money and that more money comes from:

• Higher Tuition: This leads to larger student loans, which leads to more student debt which benefits these corporations (which may later go on to hire the oh-so-prestigious graduates of the university who may or may not need to pay off a quarter of a million in student debt).
• Alumni Donations: At elite, private universities, “alumni” is often code for white men of great import (read: cheque books) who visit bi-annually to binge drink with their old fraternities. (We must appeal to their notion of a university in order to continue the cash flow.)
• Endowments: The activities of these are largely unknown by the general university population except for by a select few who are trusted to know that “good” = “financially lucrative.”
• Cutting Costs Elsewhere: Universities are relying more on the underpaid labor of contingent faculty and scaling back tenure-track jobs. Plus, research is often funded by outside grants.

Funding the University Inc. in such ways is detrimental to academic freedom, because it shifts the universities resources and aim towards building its brand rather than towards creating the kind of environment where ideas can be freely expressed and interrogated. Such funding is also important to note as it emphasizes the discrepancy in power between those in charge of financing the university and those who are students there. Students cannot be framed as consumers operating on a level playing field with the university given these conditions.

Students who are shackled to enormous debt do not experience (academic) freedom. Faculty without tenure do not experience (academic) freedom. Workers unable to form a union do not experience (academic) freedom. These are insecure positions to be in and the discourse should stop framing people who demand of the university to be better as “entitled cry-babies” when they are in a more financially precarious position and/or under threat of real violence on campus.

This all goes to say: we should not conflate the university as a classroom with the university as a set of experiences. The former is what grounds the righteousness of many administrators and academics who pride themselves on advocating for academic freedom (and against “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings”). And I don’t necessarily disagree with them; I want classrooms to provide healthy doses of discomfort! Such discomfort has been pivotal to the maturation of my own thinking. But the problem is that such advocacy for “academic freedom” on the grounds of the necessity of discomfort in the classroom dismisses the fact that most students engage with the university as a set of experiences, not just as a classroom.* Such experiences may very well include the free expression and inquiry of the ideas of Audre Lorde, Adam Smith, and the classmate sitting next to you, but they also include living in the dormitories, dining and drinking on campus, student government, extracurriculars, research, Greek life, and so many other experiences!

Students do have a right to learn, eat, and play without threats of violence. The call for “safe spaces” suggests that at least some contingent of students don’t think that is possible. And it is not because they are being intellectually challenged in classrooms, it is because they are being confronted by homophobic slurs and death threats written on the walls of their dorm, a noose hanging from the main student plaza, or blatantly racist party themes, not to mention the general climate of sexual violence and the constant harassment that happens on platforms like CollegiateACB or YikYak.

To be fair to Ellison, he also said that “freedom of expression does not mean the freedom to harass or threaten others.”

So who has an appropriate case for claiming “academic freedom” as their cause?

I think university students on the left would be wise to reclaim “academic freedom” for ourselves. What is precisely at stake when we talk about racism/sexism/classism/oppression at the university is academic freedom. To continue to falsely position “academic freedom” and “safe space” as diametrically opposed is to neglect the underlying conditions that make universities un-safe for students’ free inquiry and expression (and for the free inquiry and expression of contingent faculty, workers, etc.). We should stop throwing the university a bone by giving them such easy corporate solutions like “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings,” and instead commit ourselves to the revolutionizing of the university so it no longer operates like a corporation. The language of freedom is too precious for us to cede it to those who abuse it.

*When I say “most students,” I mean “most students at private, elite universities.” It seems that these are the universities that seem to be at the forefront of these conversations about “safe spaces” or “trigger warnings”. I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the diversity of university experiences for students that includes public universities, community colleges, for-profit universities, etc. The class dynamics undergirding this issue should not be neglected, but they also shouldn’t be used as reflexive insults (e.g. “entitled college students”) without a more mindful engagement with how and why such dynamics have emerged.