Safe space vs. free speech: Unpacking a higher education curriculum controversy

Abstract

Institutions of higher education have recently been embroiled in a series of controversies concerning two related, though hotly contested ideas: the creation of safe space and the preservation of free speech. On one hand, there is a demand for institutional safe spaces—literal refuges or broad university norms that create a sense of inclusion for marginalized students—while on the other hand there is a clarion call for free speech, which seeks to uphold values of ideological diversity in the campus community. The author analyzes these competing claims for justice in higher education communities by drawing on (1) critical curriculum theory, to illustrate why these “campus culture wars” should be understood as a curricular debate, and (2) democratic education theory to demonstrate that both safe space and free speech advocates assume the purpose of higher education is a democratic education. The article concludes that there is an educational and democratic imperative to resist the false binary of the safe space vs. free speech controversy and instead navigate campus controversies with a democratic lens informed by equal emphasis on Gutmann’s (1987) two democratic principles: nondiscrimination and non-repression.

Acknowledgments

I am deeply grateful to Dr. Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Dr. Christopher Higgins, and Marisa Segel for their contributions to the ideas developed in this article. They challenged my thinking in innumerable ways and supported me through countless rounds of revisions.

Disclosure statement

The author reports there are no competing interests to declare.