"Back when universities taught serious academic subjects, students likely learned Alexander Pope’s famous phrase: “damn with faint praise.”
Damning with faint praise means “to praise something or someone in such a weak way that it is obvious you do not really admire them”—quite the opposite, in fact.
If students no longer are taught this in class, those attending any of the ten academic campuses in the University of California (UC) System were treated recently to a real-life example of faint praise by the System’s president, Janet Napolitano.
The UC CEO penned a piece in the Boston Globe titled, “It’s time to free speech on campus again.”
I was encouraged on seeing this title.
Having praised the University of Chicago’s defense of free speech on campus, I thought the University of California was offering its support.
I thought that this might signal the beginning of the restoration of free speech—and with it, of learning—on America’s increasingly politicized, repressive college campuses.
I was wrong....The intention is not to praise free speech, but to bury it.
...UC’s president falsely equates “safe spaces” with “student centers.”
UC’s leadership knows better.
It knows that a safe space is, as the site SafeSpaceNetwork defines it, “a place where anyone can relax and be able to fully express, without fear of being made to feel uncomfortable, unwelcome, or unsafe on account of biological sex, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, cultural background, religious affiliation, age, or physical or mental ability.”
Safe spaces are universities’ psychological equivalent of Intensive Care Units, although you likely will enjoy more free speech in a hospital than on many college campuses today.
The most important difference between a safe space and a student center revolves around one thing—the lack of free speech in the former.
Yet it is free speech that UC’s leadership insists it is championing..."
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