University of Chicago Makes It Clear to Incoming Freshmen: No Safe Spaces Here
With ���safe spaces��� and ���trigger warnings��� all the rage on college campuses, it���s difficult to imagine any school of note putting its foot down to say that such things are unwanted on their grounds.
But one has���and it���s located in a city that many think would be the last place to find a school taking an ���anti-snowflake��� stance.
It turns out that Campus Reform has obtained a welcome letter from Dean Jay Ellison, addressed to incoming freshmen at the University of Chicago, wherein he makes it clear that free expression and enthusiastic debate is not only welcome on campus���it���s basically a requirement.
���At the University of Chicago, we insist that all faculty and students are free to debate, disagree, and argue, without fear of being silenced,��� wrote Ellison.
Continuing, Ellison proclaimed, ���From its founding in 1890 the university has been a place of intense and productive debate and discussion, undertaken with the conviction that full freedom of expression and analysis is crucial to the cultural identity and scholarly mission of a real university. Because our campus is a place that respects unique perspectives and powerful ideas, it is also a place where opinions and even core beliefs will be tested, sharpened, and subjected to rigorous academic analysis.���
Free expression, and beliefs tested and subjected to academic rigor���at an American institution of higher learning?
What a novel concept.
By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor at Large
