Alice Kuang
Gabriel Cenizal
Camille Abutin
Section A01
Is Academic Freedom Being Threatened?
As students, we often commend our ability to exercise our freedom of speech. We use the promise of freedom of speech to retaliate in the spaces in which we feel oppressed, to fight the injustices our communities feel. However, more often times that not we find that when we exercise our freedom of speech, the forces we are speaking against work harder to quiet us down. This is done through penalization by the institution, the threats of arrest, and the stigma institutions create against freedom of speech. The readings of this week include “Berkeley Free Speech Movement: Paving the way for campus activism” by Robby Cohen, “Ethnic Cover: Inquiry Into Norman Yoshia Mineta and Post-Racial Profiling” by Darrell Hamamoto, “The Coddline of the American Mind,” by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. These three articles explore the history of freedom in academia as well as the different perspectives about it. Throughout the readings, we’ll be exploring what freedom in academia really is and why it’s being threatened by the institution.
Campus activism is something that the students in the UC system truly take pride in. From the “Not My President” rallies that spurred across numerous campuses after the late presidential elections, the activism regarding the Dakota Access Pipeline, to all the protests about hiking tuitions, UC students know how to become organized and bring fire to their freedom of speech. However, there was a point in time in which students were told not to exercise their right to speak out. Robby Cohen article, “Berkeley Free Speech Movement: Paving the way for campus activism,” reminds us that freedom of speech was not a right that was given to us but rather one we had to fight for. The Berkeley Free Speech Movement began when administrators tried to punish some students who were trying to raise funds to support the civil rights movement. In essence, UC Berkeley administrators were trying to rid the campus of organizations supporting the Civil Rights Movement. Leaders of the Free Speech Movement (FSM) saw this as an act in favor of segregation by the university and took the initiative to become more organized and work harder try and support the Civil Rights Movement. Soon enough, Jack Weinberg, a former grad student who had been supporting the Civil Rights movement in Berkeley was threatened by deans of UCB to be arrested. Weinberg’s arrest led to a sit in by thousands of students in solidarity to fight against the injustice that UCB had committed. Students stood up on the trapped police car speaking their minds and captivating audiences to retaliate. A settlement was eventually reached between the students and the administration; however, the Free Speech Movement had just begun. The settlement that was reached didn’t fully satisfy the total freedom that students wanted, so students continued to fight until they were promised what they wanted. FSM became the beacon of light for students to follow when it came to the protection of freedom of speech in academia. The effects of the movement called other universities to become unafraid to voice their opinions about the injustices in our country. The significance behind all of this was that it inspired students to realize that their freedom on this campus starts with their ability to simply speak their truth without fearing punishment by the university. FSM legitimized the importance of student voices and their role in social movements and challenged students to see what was wrong with the world and fight against it peacefully and with dignity. However, just the ability to speak out isn’t freedom; but rather simply a step towards it.
In Darrell Hamamoto’s article, “Ethnic Cover: Inquiry Into Norman Yoshio Mineta and Post-Racial Profiling,” he exemplifies how public presentation of ethnic leaders is a key factor into the support of certain cabinets in politics. With that being said, our academic freedom is also being compromised to work against our benefit in this ethnic cover of admissions. In a country of White supremacy, race has been used as a weapon to discriminate and make other races seem obsolete. The “race card” has been created as a means to degrade one’s identity, but could it also be used in a positive sense? During the election of Barack Obama, individuals saw the significance in the “race card” toward him benefitting people of color. Although his presidency reflected a game change in the use of the “race card” it did not replace the use of the “race card”. His cabinet was as white as could be, and Obama had no progress in leveling the playing field for ethnic communities. In White America, the method of using an ethnic cover to persuade and buy-in voters and supporters has been a common tactic. As Asian American students, we have felt silenced in our educational experience and have been unable to get the same amount of support as our White counterpart. The collegiate industry accepts minorities like us as a means of getting prospective students into thinking that these campuses are “diverse”, but when it comes to accessible resources and monetary support for these groups, it comes very shorthanded. In our Asian American community, many have also bought into the idea that Asians being represented in positions of government are trustworthy or have the best intentions for their respective communities. With that being said, it is very questionable if we are even truly being represented as people of color at the government level, and it comes into question if our lives are being considered in this country as a whole.
In the article “The Coddling of the American Mind”, authors Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt argue that the increasingly pervasive use of “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” in academic settings acts as a resurgence of political correctness, and threatens intellectual freedom within these settings. In these settings, trigger warnings and safe spaces have both been used to shield students from reexperiencing trauma, and to protect students from violence. The authors also argue that this culture of coddling of the mind, and the nurturing of “hypersensitivity” within students, is counteractive to addressing mental health issues. They assert that the quickness to foresee harm and danger through the “fortune telling” phenomenon, and the preemptive, protective measures that academic settings currently take do not follow the necessary “exposure therapy” needed for those who experience mental health issues to readjust to the “real world.” However, these authors’ arguments homogenizes and oversimplifies the complexity of mental health altogether under a “one solution fits all” model, as if every person who struggles with mental health issues can heal through a gradual, exposure therapy. This approach isolates mental health away from its intricately tied social and cultural contexts, like the specific Asian American experience with mental health, and describes these issues simply as “sensitivity.” The authors assert that the “real world” is harsh---that the coddling of students in safe spaces doesn’t prepare them for such a world. We would argue that the “real world” contain the social and cultural contexts that shape these mental health struggles, and these contexts include a long history of injustice, oppression and pain, especially for minorities. The authors’ simply pointing the finger at the individuals’ suffering as “oversensitive” doesn’t adequately address the injustices of the “real world.” Their inadequacy to address this fact, and their acknowledgement of the “harshness of the real world”, reinforces the importance of creating safe spaces inside such a world. In addition, every individual’s needs to healing from their traumas is different. Safe spaces provide a space for individuals to be vulnerable, and be uncomfortable so they can push themselves to grow on their own accord (the goal of an academic setting), but not feel like their lives are in danger. While we agree that “trigger warnings” for the most trivial words within academic settings may be not be the most effective, we argue that the authors’ nitpicking of past “trigger warning” and “safe space” usages negates the effectiveness and need for both trigger warnings and safe spaces. These spaces and actions allow students (esp Asian Am) to recognize their own vulnerabilities, heal from their traumas, and unapologetically speak after being previously silenced, all on their own accord.
As Asian American students, our use of freedom of speech is so imperative in a country trying to silence our worth. Our experiences as people of color give us narratives that are untold to the public and even at the government level. With this issue, we face difficulty in facing politically correctness, “diversity”/”race cards”, and an ethnic cover, but that should not stop us from being the root of what can be brought up into existence. We have the power to speak up. We have the power to influence a new perspective and voice a new era of change. Safe spaces are our only means of being real with one another and being able to understand each other’s narratives and stories. An ethnic cover should not have to define how reliable we truly are as a race, because we are meant to provide more and as much as we please toward the benefit of our fellow people in this country. We need to take it upon ourselves to use our voices to educate and support each other in order to get on the same level as our White counterpart in this journey for equality. As DJ Khalid says, “they don’t want you to speak up, they don’t want you to be heard. BLESS UP!”
References
- Cohen, R. (1985). Berkeley Free Speech Movement: Paving the Way for Campus Activism. OAH Magazine of History
- Haidt, G. L. (2015, September). The Atlantic: The Coddling of the American Mind. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/
- Hamamoto, D. (n.d.). Ethnic Cover: Inquiry Into Norman Yoshio Mineta and Post-Racial Profiling. In Servitors of Empire: Studies in the Dark Side of Asian America. Waterville, OR: Trine Day LLC.
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