Safe space in the college classroom: contact, dignity, and a kind of publicness

ABSTRACT

Current discourse about higher education focuses on issues like government funding, student debt, and admissions diversity; however, increasing attention is being paid to issues of speech and politics in the university. Alongside a series of events at several institutions, calls for ‘safe space’ on campus have grown familiar. Yet the appropriateness of such spaces on campus is debated. In this article the notion of safety implied in calls for ‘safe space’ is clarified, and three reasons are suggested for supporting such safety pedagogically. A public reason is proposed, which relies on a normative interpretation of publicness as conjoint action. This substantive version of ‘public’ could be considered when assessing the institution’s publicness, rather than typical elements of the university’s nominal publicness (funding, government oversight, etc.). By embracing and ensuring safe space, universities could become sites of public full participation, thus fostering a re-recognition of higher education as a public good.

KEYWORDS:

• Safe space
• higher education
• conceptual analysis
• dignity
• public goods

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Some samples of this position include: Kate Manne, ‘Why I Use Trigger Warnings,’ The New York Times, 19 September 2015; Aaron Hanlon, ‘The Trigger Warning Myth,’ The New Republic, 14 August 2015; and Julie Winterich, ‘A Middle Ground on Trigger Warnings,’ Inside Higher Ed, 9 October 2015.

2. For examples of this side, see Jennifer Medina, ‘Warning: Literary Canon Could Make Students Squirm,’ The New York Times, 17 May 2014; and especially Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, ‘The Coddling of the American Mind,’ The Atlantic, September 2015.

3. The full tweet from Villines reads: ‘Slide from recent campus carry dialogue at UH, in response to faculty concerns about dangers from armed students.’ A photograph of the slide is included, which reads: ‘You may want to: Be careful discussing sensitive topics; Drop certain topics from your curriculum; Not “go there” if you sense anger; Limit student access off hours.’ All can be viewed at https://twitter.com/jeffinthebowtie/status/701898811115855872?lang=en.