Just a few years ago, many university administrations were hyper-ware of the feeling of safety among the student body. Some recent alumni may look back on those years with a heady euphoria, remembering when they could pressure administrations to cancel speaking engagements and even fire faculty. In most cases, the student’s physical safety was never in question, only their feeling of comfort. The use of the words safe and unsafe in non-violent and non-threatening situations was quite common. While there are benefits to creating safe and comfortable spaces, there are also negative consequences.
The idea of Safe Spaces originated in the women’s movement decades ago and focused on creating an area where people could come together and speak freely. The idea expanded to include members of the gay and lesbian community when they adopted the concept. A gathering place for like-minded individuals makes a lot of sense. If you have ever been a part of a minority then you understand the desire to connect with people who share your experiences, history or ideology. The idea of having a place to go where you don’t have to be on your guard or needing to frequently explain basic concepts will make sense.
For example, when you meet someone who has the same passion for a musical genre or band, a verbal shorthand is quickly adopted based on that shared interest. Stating a band name or musical venue can often initiate a long and detailed conversation. In terms of our lived experiences, music is fairly trivial and inconsequential but when that lived experience includes violence, threats of violence, intimidation and marginalization, being around a group that understands not just intellectually but experientially is helpful. It is not just about being able to talk with those who live the same experience but also knowing one can relax and let their guard down. One can speak without fear of judgment. When you are a part of the majority, every holiday is your holiday, every environment suits you and every space is your safe space. For everyone else, having a space is nice, how necessary is it?
We all go through an oscillating cycle of emotional readiness. There are natural peaks and troughs to our emotional state; moments when we are hyper-aware and moments when we are totally relaxed. This emotional state has a physiological aspect that we have little control over. It is sometimes referred to as the fight/flight/freeze response and is managed by the sympathetic nervous system. When we are outside our homes and in the world, we are more conscious of our surroundings than when we are at home on the couch where we (hopefully) feel safe. Those that are constantly under physical threat such as police, active-duty military or people who live in dangerous environments also go through the same peaks and troughs but the entire cycle is shifted further into the hyper-aware range. This means that the peaks are higher than average but the troughs are higher as well. They are always partially wound up. Even when sleeping, they do not relax as much as someone who never encounters a stressful situation. Some that leave high-tension environments find that they are never able to wind down to a ‘normal’ state.
Most will agree that everyone should feel comfortable sometimes. We all need moments to feel relaxed. Stress-free moments are not only enjoyable but are essential for our health and well-being. There is plenty of data illustrating the impact of stress on our mental as well as physical health. The impact of stress is important to recognize because we then understand the benefit and even the need for safe spaces. We cannot simply ‘think’ our way into a relaxed emotional state any more than we can ‘think’ our way out of depression. The previous paragraph used the home as a place where one can relax. It is helpful to remember that not everyone feels safe at home and so creating safe space with like-minded individuals becomes important, maybe even essential.
While some trivialize the need for safe space, hopefully it is clear that it is a necessity that we all feel safe in some place and at some time. The problem that we are dealing with now began when people began to incorporate comfort within those safe spaces, not physical comfort but emotional comfort. As safe spaces expanded to comfortable spaces, the concept of safety expanded to include the feeling of comfort. And so when someone claims to feel unsafe, often what they mean is that they feel uncomfortable.
In order to move forward with the conversation it is important to recognize that one cannot feel comfortable without feeling safe but it is possible to feel safe without feeling comfortable. Comfort exists within the realm of safety but one can be outside of the comfort zone and still be within the realm of safety. As important as comfort can be in our lives, it is also important to feel uncomfortable. When we are uncomfortable, we change. When our foot falls asleep, we move it. When our environment doesn’t suit us, we alter it or find a new one. When the people around us make us cringe, we change our associations. These discomforts and their solutions are external.
Discomfort can be healthy, but when we blur the difference between comfort and safety we remove discomfort as a motivator for change. An unintended consequence of the inclusion of comfort within safety is the dilution of education. Feeling safe is essential to learning but feeling comfortable is not. In fact, feeling comfortable can impede learning because internal discomfort is essential for growth. If you want to run a faster 5k, you have to push beyond your comfort zone. If you want to lose weight, you must endure the feeling of hunger. If you want to deactivate a toxic behavior, you must first acknowledge that you behave in a toxic manner.
Sometimes discomfort is helpful for the learning process and sometimes it is not. We must recognize when discomfort is distracting us from learning and when we are uncomfortable because we are learning. Sitting in an uncomfortable chair is a distraction and not helping us. Acknowledging our mistakes is uncomfortable but is a sign of growth. Being challenged for our erroneous assumptions is uncomfortable and helps us to improve.
The slide from a designated safe space to an environment that is inoffensive and non-confrontational has made it difficult to distinguish between safe and comfortable. At the edges, the difference between safe and comfortable is obvious. As we get closer to the intersection of safe and comfortable, the difference is unclear. When a university student can proceed from wake-up to bedtime without ever being challenged, they suffer. This ambiguity between safe and comfortable has removed the idea of a discrete, designated safe space and replaced it with a safe and comfortable ecosystem. This is how the educational system has suffered; the learning environment requires discomfort to motivate growth and discomfort is no longer welcome in that environment.
Many universities are constrained by the First Amendment and many others use the First Amendment as a model on which to base their policy toward speech on campus. A quick review of the First Amendment with regards to speech will be helpful for some. The First Amendment prevents the government from making a law that limits speech. It protects the ability to speak and also the ability to hear what is being said. Don’t forget that only some speech is protected. Some of the types of speech that are not protected are defamation, incitements to violence and true threats. There is a lot more to the constitutional protection of free speech, but that summarizes the relevant bits.
The desire to create a comfortable environment at universities has frequently been accompanied by restrictions on speech. Many universities and supporters of higher education justify the restrictions by citing safety when in fact what they mean is comfort. It can be difficult to cut away comfort and leave safety intact. If it were easy, we would not be having these conversations. When we hear about a speaker being disinvited from an event or being de-platformed, we need to ask ourselves, has someone’s safety been threatened or has their comfort been challenged.
When we address examples near the fringes of the safety debate, most agree when it is a safety issue and when it is more to do with comfort. A bunch of men wearing pillowcases over their faces and burning a cross outside of a home may not be a direct threat, but historically the activity ends with someone dying. The threat of violence is implicit at best and imminent at worst. A white author with a bunch of initials after his name speaking about his displacement in society is not very threatening, but awfully uncomfortable to a lot of people (even a fair number of white men).
The distinction between feeling safe and feeling comfortable becomes more difficult to discern where the issues of safety and comfort meet. A bunch of white men carrying torches and shouting in unison as they march across a campus at night, is a more ambiguous situation and deserving of attention as to whether it is uncomfortable or dangerous. They are just marching, sure, but what are they shouting? Also note that it bears a passing resemblance to cross-burning (open flame is an affectation not a necessity) and at these marches some wore their white supremacy loud and proud.
The worst thing that can happen is that we shut down the conversations. It is very easy to see the failings on the other side of the argument and nearly impossible to recognize when we are unwilling to engage in an honest manner. Whether we latch onto the safety side of the argument or the free speech side, unless we can acknowledge that the intersection of safety and free speech is complicated and not at all obvious, there will be no progress. The first step is recognizing the distinction between comfort and safety and their relationships with free speech.
