After many years teaching high school students in public schools, I have come to understand the concept of “safe space.” The idea is to provide a place (the school campus) in which students can feel comfortable and secure about being there so that learning is enhanced. This idea of safe space has also become part of the university setting. Advocates for safe space at universities vary, but the most committed supporters come from the feminist and LGBT communities. For instance, in Canadian and British post-secondary schools, LGBT advocates have been successful with “positive space” initiatives. Positive spaces on campuses are meant to provide areas free of hate speech and sexual harassment.

In the 1980s, I was living in Santa Cruz, and I recall pink triangles on phone poles and on buildings downtown and on the University of California campus. It turned out that these triangles represented the LGBT movement. Nowadays, you may see these pink triangles inverted inside a green circle, an emblem that represents an LGBT community in a space free of homophobia. To have preserve such a space, advocates shun any negative remarks about the LGBT lifestyle as a way to create a caring community.

But the idea of safe space, based on my experience in grad school, has gone further, changing the very idea of a university. In my opinion, the university (in the interests of positive space) now leans towards being so concerned about student feelings that it sacrifices critical thinking. Indeed, the very idea of critical thinking has developed a negative connotation in several parts of academe. Critical thinking, which I cannot imagine, for instance, disappearing in law school without terrible consequences, often gets described by politically correct types as “aggressive,” “violent,” “condescending,” “hegemonic,” even “white male privilege.” And yet for students and faculty who actually believe that critical thinking is critical in higher education, remaining silent seems to be the norm.

There is, as a result, an academic chill in effect at universities, even at a southern school such as the University of South Carolina. This chilling effect is based on good intentions, of course – to protect and to buffer students from violence and hatred. But the actual effect is to make college a “transitional object,” as psychologist Donald Winnicott called the security blanket of a child transitioning from mother to objective reality. In the case of college students, the blankey of safe space from critical thinking hurts more than helps, arresting one in adolescent mental development rather than accelerating one into adult intellectual development. This learning process is also a maturing process. That is why the university is already set off from the world of everyday business reality, for it provides a space for students to find the resilience and toughness in a less hard-hitting environment before coming to deal with greater difficulties and heavier burdens of responsibility.

As an older, non-traditional student in grad school, I understand that my perspective is based on raising a family, having a career, and having a bit more experience than my peers. So I cannot be too hard on this new generation of students, and their charm and creativity are so refreshing. But creative energy and positive space can only be made better by critique and inquiry, which should be at the core of all academic activity.