Arman Sharif: Respecting all views doesn’t mean legitimizing hate speech

There is a myth that sensitive “snowflake” students demand safe spaces, the destroyers of dialogue that impede vibrant educational exchange in universities. Critics often zero in on the fragile, progressive “social justice warrior” – the more liberal and politically correct, the better – although some college conservatives have echoed these demands for safety as well.

Ridiculing the snowflakes – photographing them, provoking them – makes for the perfect fodder to kindle clicks, reads and ultimately a larger platform for far-right movements, and Milo Yiannopoulos has done just this to promote the so-called “alt-right” white nationalist movement. The conservative journalist was formerly scheduled to speak at UCLA for a second time on Feb. 2 as part of his “Dangerous Faggot” tour. Students exercised their right to protest Yiannopoulos’ visit to UCLA last year and even demanded that the administration intervene, citing toxic campus climate.

Some university officials are quick to demonize safe spaces as intellectual insulation, but they’re ironically dependent on safe spaces, like retention centers for Latino students or LGBTQ centers, to adorn glossy admissions brochures that tout diversity. For example, less than two weeks ago, Yiannopoulos’ tour stop at UC Davis was canceled because of protests, and Interim Chancellor Ralph J. Hexter decried the protests for not showing respect for all views – even “repellent” ones.

That contends a respect for “views” that equate feminism with cancer, deny the existence of transgender people, propagate the idea that “Gays should go back in the closet” and compare Black Lives Matter to a terrorist group.

Administrators must stop framing these necessary spaces in a negative way that betrays people’s unwillingness to accommodate certain groups on campus. But there is a delusion that nearly any programming on campus, no matter how extremist, hateful or in obvious violation of “True Bruin Values,” student conduct code and basic human decency, has a legitimate political stance and merits a platform that uses university space and resources. The criticism of safe spaces on campus is unwarranted and the university shouldn’t legitimize harmful hate speech from incendiary bigots.

[Related: Jacqueline Alvarez: Campus safe spaces prevent students from engaging in honest dialogue]

By default and definition, safe spaces arise from communities that have had their voices revoked in the first place and haven’t been speaking to begin with. Henna Dialani, a second-year undeclared student, explains the absence of these safe forums means that “there are voices that are more amplified and others that are forgotten. Safe spaces are a space to uncover forgotten or ignored narratives.”

To allow for constructive dialogue, a space has to be fundamentally designed around a message of accepting others’ identities and experiences, not based on inflammatory statements like “An Illegal Immigrant Killed My Child” or a misogynistic “Feminism is Cancer.” Dialani emphasized this, adding that “Safe spaces are meant to achieve positive outcomes that do not attack the worth of another person.”

If the Ku Klux Klan or Westboro Baptist Church were to hold a talk at UCLA, campus reactions would be less accepting. Yiannopoulos is simply more palatable under the guise of a “rational” political standpoint.

Safe spaces manifest in versatile ways, embodied in everything from campus-funded resource centers to a syllabus that expressly indicates sexual violence will appear in lecture. These spaces are necessary to both retain marginalized groups on campus and allow them to thrive. And contrary to what many education pundits contend, they don’t have to inhibit education or fruitful dialogue.

With effective facilitation, an experienced moderator usually prefaces the conversation with agreements that delineate basic rules, like assuming good intent with others’ comments. This acknowledges that everyone is coming from different backgrounds and experiences. A conversation that checks people on insensitive or invalidating comments, while leaving time to explore why they may be problematic, is conducive to open-minded dialogue and dismantling oppressive paradigms. Generally speaking, dialogue liberated of toxic and invalidating language is productive dialogue.

Jerry Kang, vice chancellor for equity, diversity and inclusion, said our lives are composed of safe spaces as well as “brave spaces,” the latter of which he added requires students to be “exposed to new and sometimes offensive ideas” to help them grow.

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Although Kang affirms that the university is committed to maintaining “baseline levels of safety such that people can engage even in the bravest of spaces,” there is still the fact that these kinds of events constitute real threats of violence – bigoted language eventually begets physical violence against certain communities. For example, a man was shot during a Yiannopoulos protest at the University of Washington on Friday night. Preventing Yiannopoulos or other proponents of hate speech from speaking on campus shouldn’t be framed as hostility to diverse ideas, but rather deflecting someone who openly associates with a violent neo-Nazi, white nationalist movement that invalidates others’ identities – or even poses a risk to their lives.

And of course, what’s most unwarranted is that marginalized students, be they sexual assault survivors or minorities facing exclusion in society, are deemed weak and gaslighted as “avoiding realities contrary to their own.” To write students off as just needing to “get used to the real world” is a lazy excuse to perpetuate trauma for those already dealing with it. No amount of safe-space designated rooms, discussions, themed dorm housing or syllabuses can fix that. These students are already the toughest of the tough in this sense and don’t need constant appraisal of their grit.

It’s sad to see people expend energy on bashing the idea of a safe space instead of the forces that created the need for them in the first place. And to put it into a neat, clean frame of “an educational exchange of ideas” – last time I checked, Yiannopoulos and his cronies weren’t up for that.