Frederik deBoer’s article, Why We Should Fear University, Inc., explains how corporations use insidious methods to remain in power in the university. He at the same time praises student activists and decries students’ need for content warnings, claiming that students are unknowingly serving the corporations making money off of them. DeBoer defends Laura Kipnis in her article criticizing the new generation of students’ “sexual sensitivity” — but this in itself devalues the work of student activists. Aren’t students, most only newly legal adults, owed the right to be defensive of our own bodies? Should we not be allowed to dictate protections for ourselves, particularly when so many people in authority, older people, abuse their both social and political power over youth in order to sexually assault? Or is DeBoer wanting student activists to serve a particular level of authority, that of the faculty? Does DeBoer praise student activists only because he wishes for student activists to fight his fight for him?
DeBoer’s view of the student body is also patronizing. He claims that students see college as a “luxury resort hotel” and walk out of classrooms to “spend their evenings in Greek houses and dorms that are in a state of perpetual alcoholic fugue.” How much of the student population is this? I doubt these are the same students participating in activism, the selfsame activism which brought about the normalization of content warnings, Title IX, etc. Students who are rich are also students who are protected, students with power, and students who, according to DeBoer, spend too much of their time drinking to think critically about what they want anyway.
On the particular subject of content warnings, while it is true that this system can be abused (as can any extant system ever created), one has to also consider the benefits of such a system, rather than consigning all students who use it to the category of “snowflake”. There exists the widespread perception that content warnings are meant for offensive content, rather than content, mostly visual, capable of harming a student’s psyche due to past traumas and personal circumstances. The belief that providing content warnings censors information is also faulty -- content warnings provide students the ability to opt out of activities they know to be harmful to themselves. Students with mental disabilities including and not limited to paranoia, PTSD, anxiety, and depression find that hearing about content including and not limited to the violent treatment and murders of people in their communities and slurs with which they associate violence towards themselves, cannot be expected to bear the burden of living or reliving this violence in an environment meant to educate. Accommodations can surely be made for nonparticipating students individually. Content warnings do not have to impede in the education of others.
While DeBoer makes good points about how university administration is steadily being bought, and that capitalism itself is poisoning higher education, and thus taking political and economic power away from younger generations, I disagree with how often he uses the student body as a scapegoat and refuses to listen to student voices and concerns while at the same time emptily championing student efforts in activism. We cannot be expected to be activists for faculty who do not listen to or respect us in return.
How will these articles be connected to Asian American-specific issues?
Frederik deBoer. “Why We Should Fear University, Inc.”
AGGIE TV. (2011, November 18). UC Davis Protestors Pepper Sprayed [Digital image]. Retrieved January 25, 2019, from https://i.ytimg.com/vi/6AdDLhPwpp4/maxresdefault.jpg
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