Feel My Pain
Are today’s campus protests and trigger warnings just a part of the typical cycle we’ve always seen on American campuses? Or are we sort of losing our minds? It turns out that if you consider some of the recent examples, the answer to that question is very much up for debate. The New Yorker’s Nathan Heller takes a look at what’s roiling the liberal-arts campus. “Sensitivities seemed to reach a peak at Emory when students complained of being traumatized after finding ‘trump 2016’ chalked on sidewalks around campus. The Trump-averse protesters chanted, ‘Come speak to us, we are in pain!,’ until Emory’s president wrote a letter promising to ‘honor the concerns of these students.'” I worry about the broader trend — at universities, and on the Internet — of forcing those with an opposing or even offensive opinion to keep it to themselves or risk getting shouted down or fired. The Internet promised an era of say anything; but instead we got the age of STFU.