{"id":41106,"date":"2017-10-29T12:47:07","date_gmt":"2017-10-29T19:47:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=41106"},"modified":"2017-10-29T12:47:07","modified_gmt":"2017-10-29T19:47:07","slug":"problem-taking-offense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/problem-taking-offense\/","title":{"rendered":"The problem with \u201ctaking offense\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

The notion that college student protesters are reacting to \u201coffensive\u201d speech has held outsized influence in national debates about free speech and student unrest on campus. The right\u2019s preoccupation with the idea of the \u201coffended\u201d student\u2014the \u201ccrybully,\u201d the \u201csnowflake,\u201d the \u201clittle fascist\u201d\u2014is so integral to conservative political identity in the Trump era that it\u2019s elevated an entire media industry, with sites like Campus Reform dedicating themselves almost entirely to the \u201coffended college student\u201d beat. Even in more politically neutral circles, it\u2019s common to\u00a0frame<\/a>\u00a0student grievances as matters of \u201cbeing offended,\u201d even while acknowledging, as University of Oregon president Michael H. Schill does, that \u201coften, the concerns students express very much deserve to be addressed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among the most memorable flashpoints for the \u201coffended\u201d student bugbear was the tense verbal conflict over \u201coffensive\u201d Halloween costumes at Yale, between Master Nicholas Christakis (of the Silliman residence) and a student who shouted \u201cIt is your job to create a place of comfort and home for the students that live in Silliman\u2026do you understand that?\u201d Though this student was clearly angry and frustrated, she articulated a perfectly reasonable concern, a concern far more profound and consequential than whether she was personally \u201coffended\u201d by those who support the right to wear \u201coffensive\u201d Halloween costumes. The role of residential faculty like Christakis is a tricky one (I know, because I\u2019m a faculty resident), and whether we agree with the student, she has at the very least raised reasonable and important question about what residential staff should and shouldn\u2019t do to create not a \u201csafe space,\u201d but a living space for all students.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, even left-leaning media covered the Yale incident with an emphasis on \u201cdisrespectful\u201d college students demanding \u201csafe spaces<\/a>\u201d and being \u201coffended<\/a>\u201d by words and costumes. \u00a0Indeed, taking offense (over Halloween costumes) was central to what happened at Yale, and in so many other campus incidents. But too often we\u2019re uninterested in investigating and discussing the conditions underlying our \u201coffended\u201d students. Too often, the salaciousness of \u201coffended\u201d student stories takes precedence over more interesting and more pressing issues, like whether colleges and universities who rightly aim for diverse student bodies are also fostering communities in which every student is safe enough to thrive.<\/p>\n

We have to recognize that the language of \u201ctaking offense\u201d or \u201cbeing offended\u201d was always part of a rhetorical ploy to minimize graver concerns than how students feel. In other words, focusing on the idea that \u201cstudents were offended\u201d is a way of reducing rational, well-founded grievances to matters of mere emotional reaction. Phrases like \u201cI\u2019m sorry you were offended\u201d elide the persons, actions, or conditions that generate student grievances, placing the burden of justification on the aggrieved. The logic of this rhetorical move is that if students \u201cwere offended,\u201d it\u2019s because they allowed offense to happen, thus they did it to themselves.<\/p>\n

In reality, when students speak for themselves\u2014as opposed to when media outlets disingenuously frame their concerns as matters of \u201coffense\u201d\u2014they don\u2019t usually speak of being offended. They may describe something as \u201coffensive\u201d en route to explaining why (or what the real problem is). And when they do frame grievances in this manner, it\u2019s typically while searching for further language to express a grievance that goes well beyond how they feel. If we actually listen to the students present at and behind some of the highest-profile campus controversies over the past few years, we find them articulating concerns that go well beyond being \u201coffended.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jonathan Butler, the University of Missouri student who went on a hunger strike after a swastika appeared on the wall in a campus bathroom,\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0\u201cI already feel like campus is an unlivable space\u2026I\u2019m already not wanted here. I\u2019m already not treated like I\u2019m human.\u201d Butler isn\u2019t talking about being \u201coffended\u201d or needing a \u201csafe space\u201d; he\u2019s talking about whether he\u2019s treated with basic human dignity on his campus.<\/p>\n

A group at Middlebury College, White Students for Racial Justice, objected to the Charles Murray event last March that infamously turned violent not by claiming Murray was \u201coffensive,\u201d but that Murray\u2019s research \u201cuses largely anecdotal evidence to blame poor people in America for being poor, attempting to explain economic inequality through a perceived gap in virtue.\u201d Regardless of whether you think such critiques of the quality of Murray\u2019s research justify the desire to prevent him from speaking on campus, it\u2019s clear that Middlebury students\u2019 concerns about Murray were about more than how he makes them feel.<\/p>\n

More recently, in\u00a0response<\/a>\u00a0to Ben Shapiro speaking on campus, Berkeley student Samantha Shadrow writes: \u201cFew of my fellow students\u2026seemed perturbed by Shapiro\u2019s visit. We were more put out by the administration\u2019s decision to preemptively close six buildings and hire what seemed like a platoon of militarized police officers.\u201d Clearly, Shadrow\u2019s grievance isn\u2019t that she and fellow Berkeley students are offended by Shapiro or Milo Yiannopoulos, but that her university chose to surrender itself to high-profile disruptions.<\/p>\n

My point here is not that any of these student responses\u2014whether to university administrators or to allegedly \u201coffensive\u201d campus speaking events\u2014are necessarily grounds for disinviting speakers, or for ousting people in administrative positions.\u00a0 My point is that these student responses are all substantive and germane. They are all, unto themselves, starting points for further dialogue and debate that we should take seriously. When we reduce such incidents to mere matters of students \u201ctaking offense,\u201d we effectively silence the substantive speech of these students. In this way the very rhetorical framing of the \u201coffended student,\u201d ostensibly in the name of \u201cfree speech\u201d concerns, is itself a silencing tactic.<\/p>\n

Author Bio:\u00a0<\/strong>Aaron Hanlon is Assistant Professor of English at Colby College.\u00a0 He writes regularly on issues related to free speech on campus<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The notion that college student protesters are reacting to \u201coffensive\u201d speech has held outsized influence in national debates about free speech and student unrest on campus. The right\u2019s preoccupation with the idea of the \u201coffended\u201d student\u2014the \u201ccrybully,\u201d the \u201csnowflake,\u201d the \u201clittle fascist\u201d\u2014is so integral to conservative political identity in the Trump era that it\u2019s elevated […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":41107,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[136954],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-41106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-higher-education","tag-offended-college-student"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe problem with \u201ctaking offense\u201d - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/problem-taking-offense\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The problem with \u201ctaking offense\u201d - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The notion that college student protesters are reacting to \u201coffensive\u201d speech has held outsized influence in national debates about free speech and student unrest on campus. The right\u2019s preoccupation with the idea of the \u201coffended\u201d student\u2014the \u201ccrybully,\u201d the \u201csnowflake,\u201d the \u201clittle fascist\u201d\u2014is so integral to conservative political identity in the Trump era that it\u2019s elevated […]\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/problem-taking-offense\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-10-29T19:47:07+00:00\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/welcometocampus.jpg\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"680\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"383\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Kevin\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Kevin\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/world.edu\\\/problem-taking-offense\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/world.edu\\\/problem-taking-offense\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Kevin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/world.edu\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/42c1c1d5ff7ffbdf0bd50ed94c6ae6ee\"},\"headline\":\"The problem with \u201ctaking offense\u201d\",\"datePublished\":\"2017-10-29T19:47:07+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/world.edu\\\/problem-taking-offense\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":983,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/world.edu\\\/problem-taking-offense\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/world.edu\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2017\\\/10\\\/welcometocampus.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"offended college student\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Higher Education\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/world.edu\\\/problem-taking-offense\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/world.edu\\\/problem-taking-offense\\\/\",\"name\":\"The problem with \u201ctaking offense\u201d - 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