Week 7

Vince Olanda

Week 7

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In this week's readings, 'Berkeley Free Speech Movement: Paving the way for campus activism' by Robby Cohen, and The Coddling of the American Mind' by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, they bring up a topic that is quite interesting to discuss about: whether the censorship enforced on college campuses is benefitting the students, or in reality is it actually deterring them off the actual reality that they must know and fully be aware of. The intentions of censorships are valid, in the sense that most students can be negatively affected by certain microaggressions that may be brought up in certain concepts. I believe the main difference between whether or not a concept is a microaggression is how the professors choose to deliver the material. Their intent must be clear; if they deliver the content without any purpose of educating and informing, it's clearly a microaggression. On the flipside, if they desire to educate to teach students what the real world is actually like, and to instill in their minds how harsh reality is, then in that way it's the sense of tough love. Nonetheless, no matter how the concepts are approached, there will be some sort of backlash to it by the students. At that point, it boils down to who's willing to face it head on.

This image demonstrates the effects of censoring the content that we eventually need to know. The fact that we don't know what lies underneath the black bars only exemplifies how chilling it is to have information right in front of us yet now be aware of it.

Questions: Where do we draw the line between how harmful it is to censor content? At what point will this censored content eventually be erased completely from existence, at least in our eyes? What steps do we need to take to approach fixing this?

References: 

• Haidt, G. L., & Haidt, J. (2015, November 20). The Coddling of the American Mind. Retrieved May 11, 2017, from https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/