Week 7 - Jamie McCaa

Jamie McCaa

ASA 002 Section A03
Week 7

Reading both "The Coddling of the American Mind" and "Berkeley Free Speech Movement: Paving te Way for Campus Activism" gave material for me to think of free speech in new ways. The Berkeley piece details the success of the Free Speech Movement on the Berkeley campus, winning freedom from political silencing through the use of non-violent protesting. "The Coddling of the American Mind" focuses on today's college campuses, and how too heavy of a focus on trying to cater to everyone's comfort can lead to a diminishing of critical thinking in academic spaces, as well as how this environment can create mindsets that are unfit for the "real" world.

In the case of both pieces, I found the relationship of the faculty with these notions of free speech to be particularly interesting; in the Berkeley piece, the faculty are at first reluctant to support the Free Speech Movement but are eventually moved to do so by the mass arrest of eight hundred students, and in the "Coddling of the American Mind", the faculty are described as adhering too closely to the demands of the students in their demands for trigger warnings and such. Because the theme of the week is "PC Culture" as well as "Academic Freedom and it's Threats", I feel that this showing of how different the faculty acted in these two periods of time in relation to the students shows that there should be a balance between how the faculty interacts with the students' requests for speech policies. Academic freedom should be allowed, but not at the cost of omitting important things we must learn, nor at the cost of endangering students. If a balance could be found between accommodating students who truly need help engaging with material, while also encouraging critical thinking around controversial topics, it would be ideal.

Question: Are trigger warnings being largely appropriated and demanded by people who don't suffer from anxiety-related disorders? Do some trigger warnings exist in the "real world", and should they?

References:

Cohen, R. (1985). Berkeley Free Speech Movement: Paving the Way for Campus Activism. OAH Magazine of History. Retrieved on November 5, 2017.

Lukianoff, G., & Haidt, J. (2015). The Coddling of the Asian American Mind. The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company. Retrieved November 5, 2017.

(n.d) [digital image]. Retrieved from http://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/2014/09/18/trigger-warning-fantasy-vs-reality/