some students to turn classrooms into“safe spaces.”^25 It is perfectly reasonable for students to
expect campus safety measures to be in place to protect them from physical assault and harassment,
and for action to be taken if such things occur; it is also reasonable to expect that certain campus
organizations be confidential safe spaces, especially student support groups. There are real cases
of assault, harassment, and hate on campus, and universities are obliged to respond. But the safe
space mentality goes further, embracing what O’Neill calls an“ideology of safety,”where even
expressing an idea in class could be considered an act of violence against someone who is offended
by it.^26 With the increasing support of activist administrators and some professors, Safe Spacers
mobilize to turn the entire campus into an intellectual safe space, issuing demands such as: placing
“trigger warnings”on course syllabi to identify potentially traumatizing materials; censoring
certain materials altogether from courses if deemed too offensive; reprimanding/firing professors
who do not espouse progressive ideas regarding race, sexuality, gender, etc.; and disinviting pro-
vocative guest speakers who challenge the reigning political orthodoxies on campus.
Lukianoff and Haidt point out that this new movement of“political correctness”is
largely about emotional well-being:::. [I]t presumes an extraordinary fragility of the
collegiate psyche, and therefore elevates the goal of protecting students from psychological
harm:::.[T]his movement seeks to punish anyone who interferes with that aim, even
accidentally. You might call this impulsevindictive protectiveness.One of the main pathologies fostered by vindictive protectiveness is“emotional reasoning,”
where students let feelings guide their interpretation of reality and thereby express themselves
emotionally rather than reasonably.^27 The emotion that gets the most license is anger, because
people who express anger, especially if they are from a traditionally marginalized identity, feel
empowered, righteous, and authentic.^28 Consequently, many universities have been challenged by
groups with an aggrieved sense of victimhood, which often manifests itself in the call for intel-
lectual safe spaces.
Lukianoff and Haidt argue that the Socratic method opposes the safe space mentality because the
method“fosters critical thinking, in part by encouraging students to question their own unexamined
beliefs, as well as the received wisdom of those around them. Such questioning sometimes leads to
discomfort, and even to anger, on the way to understanding.”^29 Thus, the Socratic professor is in a
difficult situation when trying to engage the safe space mentality, because she may cause offense
with her critical approach. This chills free speech and academic freedom. For the safe space
mentality, a higher principle than academic freedom is“academic justice,”which occurs when an
academic community stops any teacher, researcher, or guest speaker whose ideas (supposedly)
justify the continued oppression of traditionally oppressed groups.^30 This could mean that a pro-
fessor receives official charges against her, and potentially loses her job, because of ideas she has
stated or published.^31
At first glance, and contrary to the Relativist, it may seem that Safe Spacers possess an
absolutist mentality. However, the absolutism of safety and academic justice intermingles with
relativism, particularly when it comes to identity politics, and this compounds the problem faced
by the Socratic professor. Identity politics occurs when one’s political positions are based on the
interests of the group (i.e.,“lesbian”) or the intersectional groups (i.e.,“Muslim, black, female”)
with which you identify, particularly if those groups have been historically victimized. Within
such politics,“critical thinking”amounts to deconstructing the oppressive white, patriarchal,
heteronormative, colonial, and capitalistic structures of the West. More important than critical
thinking in identity politics is“allyship”: for example, a white male cannot know what it is like to
be an indigenous female, but he canallyhimself with her by deferring to her experiences and
supporting her political demands.^32 Instead of a critically engaged pluralism, allyship espouses a
deferential relativism.
144 Paul Corey