You’ve probably already seen this remarkable “welcome” letter sent to incoming U of C students by Dean John Ellison. It’s probably the dumbest statement I’ve ever seen from a dean, and if you understand the usual antagonistic relationship between the professoriate and the administrative class, you know that’s a strong statement.
In this astonishingly clueless letter, Ellison promises “freedom of expression…without fear of censorship”, and emphasizes “civility and mutual respect”. These are good and necessary things. But then, in a rampant fit of hypocrisy and ignorance, he announces this:
Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called “trigger warnings,” we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove too controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual “safe spaces” where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.
Call me gobsmacked. Does Ellison even realize that his ideals of free speech are in conflict with his declarations in the above paragraph? Probably not. He’s railing against buzzwords he doesn’t understand, is proposing banning concepts that are essential for the free communication of ideas, and actually has a vision for the U of C that is antithetical to the whole idea of a university. In addition, he can’t do that, and I don’t mean that there is some rule that says he can’t, but that rejecting those concepts is literally impossible, without destroying the University of Chicago and turning it into an authoritarian prison.
Let’s start with safe spaces. Does Dean Ellison have a private office? Does it have a door on it? Does he sometimes meet with other deans in closed meetings? Then he creates safe spaces, and works in one. He is simply unaware of it, and takes the privilege for granted.
When the College Republicans meet on campus, is it OK with Dean Ellison of the LGBTQ club marches in and disrupts the proceedings with chants and signs (also, vice versa…but I suspect he’s more sympathetic to conservative organizations)? Or would it be reasonable to call campus security to eject the people who are interfering with the free expression of ideas by the organization? When you set aside a space for a specific purpose, you are creating a safe space to get the job done.
When I teach, I am an enforcer for certain rules of decorum — I create a safe space for learning. That doesn’t mean discussion is put on rails and not allowed to deviate from my plan. I might not allow a conversation about football when the topic is evolution, but if someone raises a hand and makes a creationist objection, which is wrong but on topic, I don’t allow the class to shout down the person (I have been in this situation, where the students are more discouraging of ideas than I am, and I have to crack down and insist that the class address the question respectfully). A safe space is a place where we focus on an issue, and we don’t allow distractions. I guarantee you that every class at the U of C is a safe space for a certain perspective, because that is the nature of teaching. Or does Dean Ellison think every classroom should be the equivalent of the comment section on a youtube video, where the loudest assholes are allowed to dominate?
What about trigger warnings? Ellison doesn’t understand those, either. A trigger warning is not an announcement that we won’t discuss bad, complex, divisive things. Quite the opposite: a trigger warning is an announcement that we are definitely going to talk about bad, complex, divisive things. A syllabus is a string of trigger warnings — we just tend not to think of it that way because we take for granted that the subjects are innocuous to us and are required to understand the purpose of the course.
But I once innocently listed human birth defects as a topic on a syllabus, and a distressed woman met with me to say she was worried she’d lose it in class — she’d given birth to an anencephalic baby a few years before, and she was terrified about that subject. She wanted to talk with me not because she didn’t want to hear about birth defects — on the contrary, she really wanted to learn about it, but she was conscious of her own emotional reaction — and wanted some clearer idea of what I was going to say and show. I told her that in fact I was going to focus primarily on neural tube defects, and that yes, I had some photos of the phenomenon, but the focus was primarily on mechanisms. It was enough that she knew what to expect so she could prepare for it, and she just asked that I let her know before I showed the photos.
I always do that. Before I show students a photo of a deformed fetus, I tell the students that I’m going to show them a photo of a deformed fetus. That’s basic empathy and respect, the very things Dean Ellison says students should expect, while insisting that they’re forbidden if they’re labeled “trigger warnings”. I’m not interested in suddenly springing a shockingly graphic image on the class to make students vomit in the aisles and weep — that’s not a strategy for good learning.
That’s a trigger warning. And I learned that lesson almost 30 years ago, when we didn’t call them trigger warnings, although it was exactly the same thing. Does Dean Ellison think we should talk about controversial topics, but we should always surprise the students with them?
Let’s talk about cancelling controversial speakers. I actually sort of agree with Ellison on this one — once a speaker is invited, there’s an obligation and commitment to carry through on it. But what’s not being talked about is the process that leads to those speakers being invited. Who’s selecting them? Who’s paying for them? What’s the purpose behind bringing that particular person to campus? There are a lot of strings being pulled behind the scenes that the students don’t see until there is an announcement in the school paper or on a poster that hey, U of C is bringing a war criminal to campus! Or an anti-war activist! Then what?
Does Dean Ellison suggest that students are not allowed to be appalled at the privileges given to speakers they object to, and that they are not allowed to loudly protest? Because that would be a violation of free speech.
Let’s imagine that the U of C invites Henry Kissinger to give a lecture. Will they create a “safe space” for him, and not allow protesters to disrupt the event? To avoid the appearance of giving a “trigger warning”, will they refuse to announce the date, time, and place of the lecture, and even that War Criminal Kissinger will be on campus? Just all of a sudden, Henry Kissinger will show up in a random class and surprise everyone by telling them about the realpolitik of murdering civilians en masse. That’s basically what they’re going to have to do to enforce the ridiculous policies in that astonishingly stupid paragraph.
But they’re not going to. That’s because that paragraph is not about policing behaviors that every responsible university does naturally, that is an implicit part of teaching and learning. It’s because he is sending a different message.
We all create safe spaces and give trigger warnings and expect that our institutions of higher learning will feature worthy speakers. It’s just that if you are part of a privileged, dominant majority, you don’t have to say it: you can trust that your values will be well represented, sheltered, and unchallenged. It’s only if you are a member of a minority that you find it necessary to be explicit and openly demand a place for your ideas; these phrases about “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” only evolved because people found that institutions were unthinkingly assuming that the majority (and the money) rules, and it took hard work to hammer out room to talk about alternative views or oppression or privilege.
The problem is that now those phrases are used as red flags to tell that privileged majority that, hey, look, here’s a minority group that’s trying to carve out a place in our university — quick, shout ’em down. Silence them. Make up rules to break them apart, to allow us to openly disrespect their concerns, to allow us to shove horrible people in their faces while not allowing them to complain. This is not about encouraging “freedom of expression”, it’s about creating tools to club down anyone who opposes the accepted status quo.
And the University of Chicago has a Dean of Students who supports this regressive attitude, and who is pleased to be able to tell new students that they are disrespected unless they conform.
Shame on the dean, shame on the University of Chicago, and shame on all those people I see who consider this a good thing. Unsurprisingly, a lot of those fans seem to be people who also detest feminists and Black Lives Matter, a degree of correlation that ought also to cause some soul-searching among the progressive people who don’t see anything wrong with that letter. You’re on the side of Libertarians, the Daily Caller, and Breitbart.
You’re also on the side opposite that of thoughtful professors who are aghast at the authoritarian privilege on display.
As a faculty member, I would be enormously dismayed if my dean sent this letter to my incoming students. Because now they’ll come into my class already having received a clear message about what my institution seems to value-and it isn’t them. The Chicago letter reeks of arrogance, of a sense of entitlement, of an exclusionary mindset; in other words, the very things it seeks to inveigh against. It’s not about academic freedom, it’s about power. Know your place, and acknowledge ours, it tells the students. We’ll be the judge of what you need to know and how you need to know it. And professors and students are thus handcuffed to a high-stakes ideological creed. Do it this way, in the name of all that is holy and true in the academy. There is no room here for empathy, for student agency, or for faculty discretion.
Bradford DeLong has a similar view of the necessity of safe spaces and trigger warnings. He’s responding to a rather twisted article that calls Ellison’s letter an “affirmative case for a liberal conception of campus free speech”, which is not just a charitable reading, it’s an I’m-giving-everything-away-and-taking-a-vow-of-poverty reading.
There is another angle of privilege to this as well – the concept that students are people who need to be “taken out of their cmofort zones” and “shocked with reality” in order to understand the importance of a subject or to create a memorable learning experience. It is both privileged and ignorant to assume that each and every student is a pampered sheltered larva who has never encountered the subjects being taught. I saw a professor on twitter yesterday who used as an example a picture of a lynching, as if there would never be students in their class who have lived with racial hatred and violence their entire fucking lives up to that point. She thought that students needed to be “shocked” with that evidence to understand that people really did hate each other for their skin color. Sure, some don’t know it, but some know it intimately.
It’s serious privilege to not get that other people have different lived experiences than you.
Yes, without clearly defining what he personally means by the terms “safe spaces,” “trigger warnings,” and canceling speakers because they are “controversial” Dean Ellison opens himself up to just these criticisms. I suspect he’d agree with everything you wrote and then say that wasn’t what he meant. And if he gave specific examples of what he actually meant the argument might into whether those are really representative or not.
I’m trying very hard to imagine how he would define safe spaces in a way that 1) was not completely contrary to the definitions of people who advocate safe spaces, 2) identifies which safe spaces he thinks are bad and unsupported by the university, and 3) which doesn’t immediately give away the bigoted, regressive game he is playing.
Jerry Coyne has the opposite take (https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2016/08/25/the-u-of-c-sends-letter-to-incoming-students-decrying-safe-spaces-and-trigger-warnings-promoting-free-speech-and-refusing-to-withdraw-speaker-invitations-hooray/), over on his not-blog, which is interesting since you’re both smart atheists who I read and respect. So it would be very interesting to see the two of you debate this directly with each other. I’m going to make the same suggestion over on his post.
I’ll note that I was talking to one student yesterday who saw ‘safe space’ as meaning certain positions (the student’s example was opposing Black Lives Matters) should be banned from the student’s campus and she supported this. So Ellison may have some justifiable concerns of people taking the idea of safe space too far.
Coyne despise me, and the commentariat on his blog even more so, so you’re not going to get a sympathetic response. I’d rather you didn’t, because his oh-so-civil commenters will just start sneering.
And reading that post…no, there isn’t an iota of agreement between us on this subject. Ick.
Interesting, I was not aware of the bad blood between you two. That’s a shame, because this is a difficult issue, and I have some sympathy for both perspectives on it – a good debate between the two of you would help people like me to make up our minds. Oh well. The comment is already up on Coyne’s not-blog; sorry, I would have respected your request but didn’t see it until too late. (I posted the comments pretty much simultaneously.)
Speaking of safe spaces, when I was at UC in the early ’80s, the school was about 90% white, in a mixed, middle-class neighborhood surrounded by poor, mostly black neighborhoods. I think the diversity of the school has improved since then, but the neighborhoods haven’t changed much. One of the most memorable lessons I had as an undergrad came on the last day of an intro to art history class, taught by a professor whose area of expertise was urban architecture. He took us on a walk around the neighborhood, pointing out all the elements designed to keep people from the surrounding neighborhoods out.
In other words, Hyde Park is one large safe space, designed to protect the mostly white, mostly upper middle class students from the urban reality of Chicago.
An addendum: when I was there, UC had the largest private police force in the world. Can’t say if that’s still the case.
It’s almost a sure bet that whenever you see someone making an excessive show of loving freedom of expression that they’re either about to say something really shitty and don’t want to own the consequences or they’re about to say something that files directly in the face of freedom of expression. And what do you know, that letter quickly went from “muh freeze peach” to “SAFE SPACES TRIGGER WARNINGS PROTESTORS RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE”. You know what mister dean? Other people have freedom of expression too, and of assembly and protest too, for that matter. They’re free to assemble in safe spaces and express their disdain for hurtful actions and words of other. They’re free to express their disdain for hurtful or inconsiderate actions by walking out or protesting. They’re free to express consideration for others by warning them that conversations are about to go into sensitive areas. Decrying those things is the polar opposite of supporting freedom of expression.
Like creationists with “if we came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys”, these kinds of people are engaged in a battle against a straw version of their opponent. In their world of straw, trigger warnings exist to give people an opportunity to run away from ideas they don’t like rather than as an act of consideration. Safe spaces are just bubbles where people get together to hide from ideas they don’t like rather than places where there are rules of decorum and hurtful, hateful talk and actions are not tolerated. Student protests are just a way to drive opponents away so as to win by default rather than an expression of outrage over the use of public funds to give a platform to speakers with reprehensible views.
It’s people like this dean who are in fact running away from things they don’t want to hear. They don’t want to be told they should approach sensitive topics sensitively. They don’t want to be told that their ideas are bad and the students are going to go somewhere where they don’t have to listen to it. They don’t want to be told that their speakers are terrible people with terrible views. They want a captive and silent audience. They want to be free of criticism and ridicule. They ironically want, as PZ pointed out, a safe space carved out for their repellent views.
I agree with PZ that the concepts encapsulated by the terms “trigger warning” and “safe space” are age-old and unremarkable – in education specifically but in pretty much all human discourse. I do, however, think that these particular terms aren’t perhaps the most helpful of language in expressing them.
“Trigger warning” sounds far too dramatic and violent for what it is – “content notice” or the like is much more apt and less overblown. I’m not averse to “safe space” myself, because it communicates well what the concept is about, but I can see that it is wide open to misinterpretation and, in our culture of toxic masculinity where danger and confrontation are lauded and safety and security sneered at, an obvious target for noxious attitudes. I’m not sure what a better term, less open to misinterpretation, would be.
I don’t like the wording of or the assumed motivation behind the dean’s letter. But it’s also disingenuous to act as if there are no problems regarding the silencing of viewpoints that have occurred and been justified by safe space/trigger warning activists. Look at the fiasco with UK student unions no-platforming gender-critical feminists and ex-muslims. Yes, everyone should be able to have a safe space. But there is a sizable contingent in the (mostly younger) academic left that demands the entire University be a safe space (or more accurately, *their* safe space). Trigger warnings are a concept that are similarly abused. No, students don’t need to be shocked out of comfort zones. Students should have a clear understanding of topics that will be covered in a course, particular if it involves potentially disturbing content. But there’s an implicit message in trigger warnings that goes beyond this. It’s not merely “course contains discussion of X”, it’s “X is bad”. Because often these trigger warnings are going beyond basic summarization of content; there’s an editorial process and introduction of bias. Is there anything wrong with a statement like “course covers gender-critical theory”? No. If it says “trigger warning: transphobia”? Yeah, that’s extremely problematic. Should all evolutionary biology courses get “trigger warning: blasphemy” slapped on them in the course catalog?
Reading along, yup, sure, no problem. Second paragraph, absolutely right. Then
[RECORD SCRATCH. MUSIC STOPS]
Paragraph three. Apparently he forgot to include those stage directions. But it happened in my brain anyway.
Really? In that case:
is simply unbelievable. So I simply don’t believe it.
No, it’s a very simple one. The issue is whether someone really respects everyone’s equal right to consideration, and of freedom of speech and assembly, and so recognises the need for trigger warnings and safe spaces and the right to protest against a speaker, or in practice only recognises the rights of those in authority and those with privilege.
@12
No-platforming isn’t a thing, and refusing to give a platform to pseudoscientific transphobic bigots is a perfectly valid use of free speech.
You are not obligated to give a playform to every bigot with a manifesto, especially when said platform comes with payment for the speaker.
If I refused to give a speaking position to Ken Ham or David Icke, am I ~no platforming~ them for not wanting to promote their batshit beliefs?
“is simply unbelievable. So I simply don’t believe it.” Ah, that’s funny. Thank you for the laugh.
Ben Haller@17,
I see you don’t actually come up with a way I could believe it. I’m not the White Queen, nor do I have her abilities.
That letter is appalling, and bizarre as well. The University of Chicago is presumably not about to ban student clubs and associations for various groups, and it’s not like they had some kind of mandatory trigger warning policy in the wings – it was something that professors could decide upon class by class.
Dammit PZ, this is why I read you every day while I gave up on Coyne some time ago: I read John Ellison’s letter yesterday, and while it made me feel queasy I couldn’t articulate exactly why. It seemed rather commonsensical, so I suspected my liberal biases were triggered and I wasn’t reading it dispassionately and rationally. Then you come along and you eviscerate his logic and you explain methodically and precisely why I was right to feel queasy. Shit man, you’re smarter than me and that’s why I read you every day. Just so you know.
KG, what you believe or don’t believe is not my problem. If you have difficulty believing true things, realigning your brain is your own responsibility. Good luck with it.
First day of classes, I spell it out for my students: we’re going to be talking the theory of evolution, which is central to the entire biology discipline. Trigger warning! It doesn’t mean I’m not going to talk about it, it means I am, and am preparing the audience. It’s also spelled out in the university catalog, and we explain that to prospective students.
Also, because I have a reputation I can’t escape, I give them another warning: I’m a big fat noisy atheist. But I also assure them that their faith or lack thereof are not obstacles (or advantages) to doing well in the class.
Look at that. I give the big trigger warnings on day one, first 5 minutes. And I do that because I respect my students and value clarity.
Unlike Dean Ellison.
Ben Haller, what are you trying to accomplish, other than appearing to be a troll? Discuss the details of the article by staying on topic, which is MIA. Don’t snipe at people.
[Nerd, please notice that this is also an example of “sniping at people”. –pzm]
And Vivec perfectly captures why there’s a perfectly justifiable backlash against the safe space/trigger warning crowd. Someone thinks our social notion of gender is problematic? Pseudoscientific transphobic bigot!!! Says no-platforming doesn’t exist, follows with a clause supporting no-platforming! Amazing, I think most people would have to wait for a new sentence before so totally and hypocritically reversing themselves. And of course, the disingenuous spin of “I’m not obligated to host” when the problem of the attack dog safe space crowd is preventing other people from hosting whom they want, either through having student unions override member organizations or outright disruption of events.
I’m not quite sure why people are being so suspicious of Ben Haller. Neither PZ nor Jerry tend to mention the other in their blogs. It would be simple for someone to have read both for months without finding out about their fundamental disagreements.
The incredible irony regarding Coyne is that he drones on and on about free speech, but if you ruffle his feathers even the slightest bit, he demands an apology or bans you. Weapons grade hypocrisy. He’s been on a tear about the “regressive left” for the last year or two, and I only post on rare occasion to hint at his hypocrisy.
Someone elsewhere pointed out that the letter itself contains a trigger warning at the end of the second paragraph…
@24
Assuming you were referring to the recent hubbub over Germaine Greer or Alice Dredger, yes, I absolutely stand by them demonstrably being pseudoscientific transphobic bigots. If you were referring to some mythical TERF that is neither transphobic nor pseudoscientific, then my apologies.
That’s because I don’t believe “no-platforming” is a thing. Universities aren’t required to give platforms to any crank that wants one, and as places of higher learning should absolutely refuse to promote pseudoscience.
Just to be clear – do you think it would be “no-platforming” for a university to turn down Ken Ham or David Icke for speaking? Did twitter “no-platform” Milo Yiannopoulos when they closed his account?
We really need a name for this phenomenon. You know what I’m talking about.
A: We need to do something about racism/homophobia/transphobia/misogeny!
B: First, we have to do something about those people who call racists/homophobes/transphobes/misogynists mean names.
PZ @ 22
No, you’re not giving out trigger warnings. In an ideal, abstract sense, sure, “trigger warning” would just be shorthand notation for a succinct summary of content, particularly content that can reasonably be expected to have an emotional impact. I’d love to see direction from administration to faculty develop course summaries and syllabi with that in mind, to encourage the kind of information you have providing students.
But can you really say that kind of dry, uneditorialized summary is what “trigger warning” proponents are demanding? They want their biases officially sanctioned and all material labeled according to their criteria (comparisons to GMO labeling are coming to mind). That’s why my question wasn’t whether biology course descriptions should note that evolution is a key topic; of course they should. But would it be right for administration to buckle to evangelist pressure and put “trigger warning: blasphemy” on your course? For them to put “trigger warning: anti-Catholic bigot, desecrated body of the Lord” on your bio?
Like Ben Haller, I also read Coyne. I enjoy seening differing opinions on issues like this. I don’t fully agree with either perspective and often feel that each author has become more entrenched over the years. I don’t often comment on either site because I feel that both audiences are more polarized that the authors, more often seeking to enforce concensus rather than probe any nuance I topic. What do I know though? I teach at a community college. My students differ in many ways from university students in the Midwest. My fellow instructors are, perhaps, far more conservative. I don’t know that I have any firsthand experience with this topic. What I read suggests that there is room for discussion and disagreement within the boundaries of reason. It appears that the University of Chicago statement did not come across well. Did it come across as intended? Will it be revised, or will Ellison feel too defensive to do so? Was it written out of a concern that some students do seek to have the entire campus serve as a safe zone, perhaps only for their perspective? Does this happen, as it often does online, with shouting down of opposing views? How do we encourage free speech, allow protest, and get students to play a role in speaker selection? I’m not convinced that I can say that here isn’t a problem to be addressed. It might be fruitful to determine what the answer is rather than simply recognizing that this answer is wrong.
gmcard: Bullshit.
I’m at a university. I read feminist literature. I follow lots of “social justice warriors”. Never have I seen anyone demand the kind of wild, sweeping “trigger warning” of everything that is dribbling out of your fevered imagination, and which would be totally ineffectual and pointless anyway. You’re just making stuff up.
This is one of those posts that keep me coming back to this blog every day. Thank you, Dr. Myers, for such a clear and succinct explanation of this subject.
Well, yes, I think we should do better than call racists/homophobes/transphobes/misogynists mean names. But assuming you mean “calling them out for their racism/homophobia/transphobia/misogyny”, no, I don’t think anything needs to be done about that, first, last, or in between. However, unjustly smearing topics such as gender-critical theory as transphobic and its supporters as transphobes, particularly when it leads to fools labeling long-time intersex advocates and feminists such as Alice Dreger as dangerous undesirables who must be blocked at any cost from addressing students who invited and hosted her, yeah, that is absolutely included in the list of things “to do something about”.
PZ, are you still on speaking terms with Ophelia? I understand why you wouldn’t trust some mostly lurker rando on your forum, given the constant trolling, but she can steer you towards plenty of evidence that this is exactly what safe space/trigger warning means to a majority of its student proponents.
Because, as we all know, there’s nothing transphobic or dangerous about supporting a theory that labels trans women as just being fetishists who just want to literally get off on the idea of seeing themselves as women.
Jerry Coyne is full of shit.
He’s literally (and I do mean LITERALLY) complaining about speakers not being given a safe space and are being confronted with ideas and perspectives at odds with their own!
As a person who got a MA from UChicago I have a couple of things to say:
1) I received trigger warnings in class.
2) I was taught to give them in my Teaching at the Community College course.
3) I’m dying to hear what some of the faulty are saying about this.
4) Professor Myers is spot on.
5) But it’s UChicago or UfC
@Vivec
I’m fine saying Milo whatever was no platformed because no platforming is permissible.
That’s fine, I just don’t think that “no-platforming” is a meaningful phenomena that needs its own term. Every singular time I’ve seen it used, it was to describe a perfectly valid refusal to give a speaking position to someone.
erp
gmcard
Would you be okay with a university banning a branch of the KKK or a group of Neo-Nazis from meeting on campus? How about from posting threatening messages, or burning crosses?
Because yes, actually, I do see part of a university’s role as being to protect its students, to enable them to pursue their education, including of challenging ideas, without fearing that they will be targeted because of things like their race or sexuality.
I should really say some forms of no platforming are acceptable. Obviously literally shouting a speaker down and/or heckler’s veto is impermissible.
But a private business denying service is fine to me.
@vivec
*shrug* I think it’s a useful short hand.
The scare quotes say it all. He’s using dog whistles. I’m surprised he didn’t mention politically correct, another favorite canard of privileged, white males who are just sick and tired of hearing people say they are sick and tired of hearing white men demean women, blacks, and other people.
I also prefer the phrase “content note” because not every reaction that would be helped by prior notification fits within the definition of being triggered, but that’s a really minor point and kind of obscures the intent – if being triggered is on the furthest end of the spectrum of bad reactions and they’re against even notifying the people who would have the most severe reaction, that, there’s nowhere else to go in terms of argument.
Considering “gender critical theory” is only consistent when you reject the lived experiences of trans people, I would not say it is unjust to call either the theory or its proponents transphobic.
The gendercrits continue to be tedious as ever.
gmcard @ 30
Who are these fabled “trigger warning proponents” you’re talking about? Because PZ and many people here in the comments support warnings/content notes. Might some people use them in ways that you disagree with? Perhaps. So? As a friend of mine put it this morning, “this is like saying that you’re going to oppose eating vegetables because you dislike PETA.”
For the first time this semester, I gave my class an extensive trigger warning at the beginning of my British Lit 1 class. The lit we’re covering (Brit Lit from Beowulf to 1800) has all manner of rapes, assaults, and people doing terrible things to one another, and I want my students to be warned that if that’s going to bother them, then they might want to consider taking a different English class (part 2 from 1800-1940 is much more sedate).
I don’t think I can make that classroom a “safe space” in terms of avoiding unpleasant topics. But I hope I can make it safe at least insofar as students treating one another with respect. And I hope that any students who come by my office will see it as a safe space as well, for whatever subjects they wish to discuss.