A Marketplace of Marketplaces of Ideas
Much, much, much has been said about Wednesday’s welcome letter from the University of Chicago dean of students to incoming first-years regarding campus speech, with a focus on the following paragraph:
Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called “trigger warnings,” we do not cancel 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 don’t have anything original to say about “trigger warnings” (other than that I can imagine circumstances in which they would be appropriate), nor do I have much to say about speaker cancellations (although I can also imagine circumstances in which they might be appropriate as well). But I do think that one point about “safe spaces” has been overlooked in the debate thus far.
As a preface: “Safe space” is a phrase with many meanings; for present purposes, I’ll use the term to describe a speech environment governed by a norm that prohibits particular statements expressing or implying viewpoints deemed to be offensive to certain people. And by “prohibit,” I do not mean that formal sanctions accompany the violation of the expressive norms of the speech environment. Rather, I mean that participants in the speech environment who violate the informal norm are subject to moderate social sanctions — and perhaps not invited back.
The proliferation of safe spaces and the expansion of the set of prohibited viewpoints pose a threat to the free exchange of ideas on college campuses. I am proud to be a member of an institution that has played a leading role in fighting against such speech restrictions for decades. Fortunately, the University of Chicago is also an institution committed to a robust exchange of views about the institution’s own policies, actions, and values. The university’s commitment to free speech entails an openness to statements challenging the university’s conception of free speech.
And to that end, it seems to me that there is indeed something to be said for safe spaces on the campus of a university committed to the robust exchange of ideas. It is no doubt important that campuses be sites of speech environments governed by norms that allow for a diversity of viewpoints. But (and this point builds off the work of Heather Gerken) there is also value in university campuses being sites of “second-order speech diversity.” By that, I mean that we might want our campuses not only to be sites of speech environments in which a diversity of viewpoints can be expressed, but also to be sites of a diversity of speech environments — including, potentially, some speech environments governed by norms that prohibit the expression of certain views.
For example, we may want there to be some speech environments on campus governed by a restriction on heteronormative language. We may want there to be other speech environments on campus in which students who believe in God know that their beliefs will not be challenged. We may want there to be still other speech environments on campus in which students can share their experiences as survivors of sexual assault and in which statements that in any way “blame the victim” are barred. And so on. We of course also want spaces on campus that are not governed by viewpoint-restrictive norms, and perhaps we want all credit-bearing classes to fall into the latter category. But we can have some safe spaces without having only safe spaces. We can have speech diversity of the first order and the second order.
The potential benefits of second-order speech diversity are several. First, supporters of safe spaces make the empirical claim that safe spaces encourage some students to recount experiences and express views that they might not feel comfortable sharing in an unrestricted speech environment. In this respect, the creation of safe spaces may actually advance the overall goal of promoting a more robust exchange of ideas. To be sure, we ultimately want students to feel comfortable expressing those same views in an unrestricted speech environment; in this sense, a safe space serves as a stepping stone. But we should remember that students come to university campuses at a relatively young age, with different levels of exposure to unrestricted speech environments growing up. Moreover, some of the experiences that students might share in a safe space (e.g., experiences as survivors of sexual assault) are experiences that virtually anyone would struggle to voice for the first time in an unrestricted speech environment.
Second, safe spaces can lead to role reversals that are productive for students’ (and faculty members’) intellectual growth. Might not a heterosexual student (or professor) learn something about the relationship between gender and language from exposure to a speech environment governed by prohibition on heteronormative statements? Might not an atheist student learn something about the nature of faith by exposure to a speech environment in which belief in God is taken as a given? Again, it is important that these speech environments not consume all of the expressive (or physical) space on campuses. But it is also not obvious that the optimal amount of “safe space” on campus is zero.
Third, our students are headed into a world in which some speech environments are indeed governed by viewpoint restrictions — a fact that no university on its own can change. Exposing students to a variety of speech environments on campus may better prepare them to navigate the complex speech ecosystem that lies beyond our gates. Treating every speech environment one encounters as a round of parliamentary debate is not an effective communication strategy. Learning to express oneself in a restricted speech environment is an important element of the art of persuasion — an art we try to teach.
Again, it is a bad thing if safe spaces become so ubiquitous that students can shield themselves from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own. But it may be a good thing if members of a campus community also have opportunities to participate as speakers and listeners in a diversity of speech environments. To use a market metaphor (this is, after all, the University of Chicago): We want universities to be marketplaces of ideas, but we also want universities to be marketplaces of marketplaces of ideas. And if that requires there to be some speech environments governed by viewpoint-restrictive norms, then let’s indeed condone (and perhaps even encourage) the creation of safe spaces.
