For the past decade or so, there’s been a movement among woke faculty and administrators to do away with the pursuit of truth full stop as the raison d’être of the academy, and to do so under the guise of protecting vulnerable students from harm. I say “guise” because I don’t think, with the two exceptions I’m about to grant, the mere exposure to any idea can be harmful.
    I’m told – and I suspect it’s true – that exposing a small child to graphic images of recently dismembered human bodies can be traumatising. So if such exposure can be avoided, I think it should be. And yes, I’m an adult. But my affairs are in order. So if, for some bizarre reason, you happen to know the hour of my forthcoming passing, telling me is just going to bum me out. So please don’t. So yes, exposing small children to traumatising images is arguably age-inappropriate. And sharing gratuitous information with a grown-up can sometimes be indefensible. But …
    But a university student is presumed to be a grown-up. She might prefer not to be exposed to those undoctored pictures of late-term abortions the pro-Life club sets up in the atrium. She may be offended. She may even be psychologically traumatised. So, at any rate, she claims. But to include psychological trauma is to expand the meaning of ‘harm’ out of any work we want the concept to do for us. I have no doubt that when I give a student a D she’s disappointed. And if, to get into grad school she was depending on an A she may even be distressed. Have I done her an injustice? No. Have I done her a psychological injury? Apparently so. But have I done her a harm? If so, and if, as the Administration now insists, harms are actionable, then I have done her an injustice.
    Defenders of the new woke world order will argue that the distinction lies in the gratuitousness of the pro-Life posters. But that won’t wash. Images are arguments. And arguments are the sine qua non of any Biomedical Ethics course. So the fallback position has to be that some arguments, and therefore some images, are not to be placed on the table. What’s at issue is not the truth of the premises, nor the validity of the conclusions drawn from them, but the acceptability of those conclusions. So that trans-athletes are killing women’s sports, though true, is transphobic. Criticism of the State of Israel, however justified, is antisemitic. That slavery was not introduced to this continent in 1619 is to deny that Black Lives Matter. That the Blackfoot are no more indigenous to southern Alberta than are the Normans to Cornwall is racist. And so on. All of these conclusions are hurtful. So so are their premises. And so given a choice between truth and (some jejune SJW’s conception of) reconciliation, the new academy has opted for the latter.
    This is not what I signed on to. Which is why I’ve just recently signed out. But unlike some of my fellow-travellers, not in high dudgeon. Institutions change. How else did the university evolve from training the clergy and commissars to the institution the demise of which I’m now grieving. It had its day, but its day is over. Now that the academy has traded truth for coddling, the pursuit of truth will simply have to find a new venue.

Categories: Everything You Wanted to Know About What's Going On in the World But Were Afraid to Ask, Social and Political Philosophy, Why My Colleagues Are Idiots

Tags: academica, psychological harm, wokeism