In a refreshingly counter-current move, the University of Chicago sent a letter to incoming freshmen informing them that the University does not do trigger warnings, safe spaces, or the disinvitation of speakers based on content or reputation. In doing so, it declares itself to be what colleges should be: loci for the free exchange and debate of ideas. It also honors the memory of one of its greatest professors, the mighty defender of liberty, the inestimable Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman.

Going to college is both a physical and a symbolic transition. It’s the child formally entering adulthood. It’s the bird leaving the nest, the butterfly emerging from the pupa, the insert your metaphor here passage into the real world. It’s a space where minds continue to be trained and where the realities of the world are slowly introduced.

One such reality is that the world is no longer what Mommy or Daddy say it is. It’s a place where people have different ideas, behave in ways they choose to without parental control at play, where conflicts will occur, and where managing interactions with people who are “other” is a vital skill. College should function as a training ground for this reality. The physical structure of college – the regimentation of schedules and coursework, the presence of professors and advisors, the assembly of people of similar age – is ideal for allowing young people to focus on training their minds to interact with others and others’ disparate ideas. In other words, it’s where the newly-adult should learn to think.

The current obsession with shielding college students from “other” ideas and opinions, via safe spaces, trigger warnings, homogeneity of belief, and the shunning of anyone who’d introduce a thought that didn’t conform goes against college’s fundamental role. Even if every opinion, conclusion, position and belief that the college teaches and embraces is correct, even if all that is “other” is wrong, the college serves its students best when it exposes them to the “other” and teaches them how to effectively deconstruct, rebut and argue down “other.” And, by embracing exposure to “other,” the college and its collection of minds – professors, administrators and students alike – can validate, disprove, modify or evolve that which it teaches and embraces.

Free speech, the free exchange of viewpoints, and the “marketplace of ideas” are what improve society, its knowledge and its wisdom. There is no benefit in shielding students from “other” apart from infantilizing them and making them less ready to function in the world.

So, a laurel, and hearty handshake (yes, the reference is deliberate – people should be able to witness that sort of “free speech” without paroxysm) to the University of Chicago for having the guts, in this era of censorship, political correctness, and “social justice” folderol to affirm its proper role as a place where young minds can grow and young people can prepare for real life.

• About the Author

About Peter Venetoklis

I am twice-retired, a former rocket engineer and a former small business owner. At the very least, it makes for interesting party conversation. I'm also a life-long libertarian, I engage in an expanse of entertainments, and I squabble for sport.

Nowadays, I spend a good bit of my time arguing politics and editing this website.

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