16.04.2015
How not to arm ourselves
Yassamine Mather looks at the problems resulting from the attempt to create ‘safe spaces’ in universities and student unions
We live in terrible times. Horrific wars in the Middle East seem endless, with atrocities committed by imperialist allies as well as jihadists. Throughout the world and even in advanced capitalist countries, inequality and poverty are so widespread that even bourgeois economists are concerned about the gap between rich and the poor. The future of our planet is in doubt because of the destructive, wasteful and polluting logic of capitalism. In most societies, sexism, racism and xenophobia are widespread, and prospects for many can be worrying and depressing.
In the words of Friedrich Engels, “If the whole of modern society is not to perish, a revolution in the mode of production and distribution must take place”; or, as Rosa Luxemburg put it, we are witnessing a “regression into barbarism”. However, in the midst of all this despair and disaster some of us still know it is possible to change the world. It is possible to fight imperialism’s warmongering in the Middle East without supporting reactionary jihadists; it is possible to fight Islamophobia without becoming soft Zionists; it is possible to fight for socialism, while rejecting reformist or Keynesian solutions.
We are not bourgeois politicians. We openly confront international, national and local evils. More importantly we are not in the business of combating these evils with reform here, legislation there: we want a new kind of society, not just here in Britain, but for the world. That is precisely why in our political activity, in our political organisations, we cannot hide from reality - we cannot and should not seek ‘safe spaces’.
We do not believe human beings are born racist or sexist - they are made so by the social conditions they inhabit. We believe that ultimately only a minority whose class interests are served by exploitation, war and destruction will resist change. We are confident in our ability to persuade the majority. We are convinced that the best way to fight nationalism and xenophobia, for example, is to explain the history of colonialism and imperialism to those who have been duped into believing such divisive nonsense. We know that the best way to deal with xenophobia, misogyny or Islamophobia is to confront it head on.
We are not in the business of falsifying reality. We reject the idea that racism and sexism can be fully defeated under capitalism and we refuse to go along with the notion that that we should aim to create little zones free from racism or sexism in an unjust capitalist world. On the contrary, we argue that the system relies on divide and rule, that racism and sexism are by-products of the prevailing economic order. We are not a religious sect that seeks to isolate its members from reality. We are determined to fight the barbarism created by the continued existence of capitalism and it is in this respect that we call ourselves revolutionaries rather than reformists. We believe that better jobs with better pay cannot be achieved by keeping out immigrants. The problem is capitalism and we see it as our responsibility to explain this to those sections of the working class that blame foreigners for job losses, low wages, poor housing and cuts.
We do not seek to create non-racist zones in impoverished areas, where migrants can be protected from racist or chauvinistic attitudes. We want to change the world, not escape from it. Unlike social workers we do not aim to help workers find individual temporary relief. We are for a collective fight and we need comrades prepared to fearlessly study and discuss questions of history, economics and philosophy, to engage in arduous debate. How can we expect them to do so if they are constantly engaged in self-censorship, if their main concern is to avoid forceful argument for fear of offending others?
LU and NUS
Last year, in opposition to calls for Left Unity to adopt a safe spaces policy, I wrote an article explaining the adverse effects of such policies on, for example, US campuses.1 Like other fashionable ideas, the concept of safe spaces has crossed the pond and is now prevalent in the UK, particularly in student unions. So this article will look at its implementation and show that its record is hardly more encouraging than in the US.
As amusing as some of these examples are, we should not forget that organisations like the National Union of Students are not of the left - they are not in the business of advocating thoroughgoing change, never mind revolution. In that sense, the fact that they succumb to the notion of safe spaces is understandable. But that is not the case for an organisation that does stand for a new society. First and foremost it would be an admission that, rather than changing society, we are prepared to settle for advance on an isolated island, creating an echo chamber for our own members and supporters, a safe space from the realities of the society they seek to change.
The NUS is not even a trade union: it aims to represent students from diverse social and political backgrounds. Its bureaucratic leadership is often dominated by Labourites and it has never been in the forefront of the struggle for change. Even at the height of the radicalisation the student movement, the NUS remained conservative (with a small c) and in recent decades it has acted as a training ground for rightwing politicians. In other words, not an institution whose policies should be imitated by organisations of the left. Yet at the February 28 meeting of LU’s national council it was suggested that, as the NUS is the only national institution that implements a safe spaces policy, it should be studied with a view to following suit.
The NUS’s policy is supposed to cover every aspect of the union’s activities across the country: “The principal values are to ensure an accessible environment in which every student feels comfortable, safe and able to get involved in all aspects of the organisation, free from intimidation or judgement.” The original intentions were worthy: the union was trying to create an “inclusive and welcoming environment for a growing student body, and attract more students from minority and/or vulnerable backgrounds”. However, the problem was that, as the policy evolved from its original focus on LGBT rights, it turned into its exact opposite, becoming divisive, discriminatory and abusive.
The latest episode in a long list of safe spaces disaster stories come from Goldsmith University. In February 2015, the student union advertised the film Dear white people as suitable “for BME students”. In case anyone was in doubt, the poster advertising the film specified it was for students of “African, Caribbean, Arab, Asian and South American ethnic origin”, and student union officials used social media to clarify that the screening was to be a “BME-only social happening”. In other words, a policy that claims to work against discrimination ended up advocating a racially segregated ‘safe space’.
The same university gave us another example. The Feminist Society had booked a comedian, Kate Smurthwaite, to perform a gig. The booking had been endorsed by a vote taken at a meeting of the society, but a group of students took exception to Smurthwaite’s support for the Nordic model of sex work, which criminalises the customers of prostitutes, not the sex workers themselves. Smurthwaite and supporters of the Nordic model argue that the policy cuts down on prostitution without targeting sex workers, but their opponents argue it drives prostitution underground, making it more dangerous. Some feminists at Goldsmiths argued that Smurthwaite’s support for the Nordic model made her “whorephobic” and she was therefore in violation of the student union’s safe spaces policy. They announced they would picket the film show, and the organisers, in conjunction with university security, decided to cancel the event.
‘Free from judgement’
At Bristol University, the student union explains that its safe spaces policy aims to achieve “an accessible environment in which every student feels comfortable, safe and able to get involved in all aspects of the organisation, free from intimidation or judgement”.2 The policy is not about preventing criminal action (which one assumes is a matter for the police and the judicial system). It is about ‘freedom’ from ‘unsafe’ language - students should not have to hear words or phrases they might find insulting. This could be anything from ‘It is so gay’ to name-calling. Some students unions have gone so far as to recommend a dress code, encouraging students to choose ‘appropriate’ clothing.
According to The Guardian,
Oxford University cancelled a debate on abortion because protesters objected to the fact it was being held between two men; the Cambridge Union was asked (but refused) to withdraw its speaking invitation to Germaine Greer because of her views on transgender issues; officials at London South Bank took down a ‘flying spaghetti monster’ poster because it might cause religious offence; UCL banned the Nietzsche Club after it put up posters saying ‘equality is a false god’, and Dundee banned the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children from their freshers’ fair. The Sun is banned on dozens of campuses because of page 3...”3
In November 2014 the University of Liverpool’s LGBT Society complained that the Islamic Society was violating the union’s safe spaces policy because they had invited a speaker, the cleric, Mufti Ismail Menk, who held homophobic views. It should be noted that this was a private meeting for members of the Islamic Society, but that did not stop the LGBT Society from claiming the event would impinge on their “freedoms and happiness” and calling on Liverpool Guild of Students to ban the event.
Then there is the University College London Union’s Nietzsche reading group. According to Spiked Online, UCLU banned the group, arguing that it was promoting “a far-right, fascist ideology” which threatened the “safety of the UCL student body and UCLU members”.4 We can all have our opinions about Nietzsche and this particular reading group. However, the idea that university students are so vulnerable that they must be protected from ‘unacceptable’ ideas is absurd. The declared intention here is to make sure the students feel ‘safe’, but in reality the policy leads to a far more sinister situation - at best dumbing down serious debate, at worst silencing critical views. The purpose is to discourage critical thought, creating the kind of bourgeois conformity cherished by modern capitalism - one that discourages rebellion. Do we seriously want to imitate this trend in LU?
University lecturers wary of new, campus-wide regulations about safe spaces have started adding warnings to their lecture notes. Students have to be warned in advance if what they read contains words or phrases they might find offensive. It would all be a bad joke if it was not so serious, adversely affecting our ability to study, engage with ideas and understand the past. How are students supposed to study history if descriptions of wars, genocide, pillage and rape are censored? In literature, poems and prose contain homophobic, sexist language. There is misogyny and violence in the classics, while science is not free from ‘offensive’ notions. See this from Louise Pennington: “How many times have I heard students refuse to read about the holocaust because the thought of it upsets them? And those who want learn about the V2 rockets, because machines are cool, and not the thousands of slave-labourers who died building them, because it made them sad …”5
Of course, the real offence is not to be found in the study of the holocaust, but in the funding by military suppliers of research into science and engineering. Firms such as BAE sponsor university departments where research into the manufacture, development and testing of weapons of mass destruction is not covered by safe spaces policies, whereas reading the views of some philosophers is taboo. Priorities are truly distorted when free speech, free enquiry and the pursuit of academic development are inhibited. To quote Spiked Online again,
The idea that students are in need of a ‘safe space’ in which to carry out their studies presents them as fragile and vulnerable. And, when you think students are too fragile even to take part in reasoned debate, and their welfare must be upheld above all other concerns, then academic freedom will inevitably wither away; cast aside in the name of a comfortable, unchallenging and, above all, ‘safe’ education.6
University authorities and their security officers have been known to use student union safe spaces policies to ban free speech on campus. The London School of Economics demands the screening of speakers and a list of those attending events on its campus to make sure the safe spaces policy is not violated. For some universities a number of subjects are considered too sensitive, too controversial for debate. The subjects range from animal experimentation to sexual abuse of children and paedophilia, to abortion, and “where the subject matter might be considered to be of a blasphemous nature”.7
Staff in academic institutions have voiced their frustration, yet the madness continues. Christopher Beckett, writing on the Index on Censorship website, notes:
It’s a far cry from the tradition out of which the theory of liberal education and the modern university was born. The period of the enlightenment was led by the rallying call of Immanuel Kant - Sapere aude! - dare to know and dare to use your own understanding in the creation and formation of your own opinions. However, this is the reverse of what we are seeing today, as debate is closed down and speech is censored on campus, all in the name of safety. If we are to recapture the campus, lead the progress of human knowledge, and create an active and engaged citizenry towards progressive social change, it’s free speech and expression we must engage in.8
Radical feminist blogger Louise Pennington adds her own complaints:
Earlier this week, I was asked to put a trigger warning on an article I published on A Room of Our Own. The request wasn’t to include a trigger warning about domestic violence or self-harm or rape or the consequences of limited options of women living in a patriarchy. It wasn’t about the reality of male violence. I was asked to include a trigger warning on a post written by a woman who regrets having an abortion. Apparently, a feminist space which includes a very personal post by a woman who regrets her abortion - an abortion she was effectively forced into - isn’t a ‘safe space’. The violence this women experienced did not require a trigger warning, but regretting an abortion does.
… Seemingly, this one article, where a feminist spoke of her regret, was enough to invalidate the entirety of the blogging network.9
Currently, a ‘safe space’ seems to mean one where nobody ever disagrees with anyone else. There have been attempts to prevent student unions from saying anything critical about the sex industry because such criticism creates an ‘unsafe space’ for students who are involved in it - the fact that students may actually be unsafe when engaged in such work seems to be of no consequence. Apparently some student unions would effectively bar support for a woman wanting to give up sex work if she so chooses.
Phobia
The examples I have given - and there are dozens more - all deal with institutions of higher education. These institutions are part of the existing order and do not pretend to play any part in seeking to change society. Yet even there the concept and practice of safe spaces has provoked censorship and controversy, not to mention a certain phobia over debate.
How a leftwing organisation engaged in the class struggle can operate, if its members (male, female, transgender, white, black …) are isolated from any view they might find offensive, is a mystery. Neoliberal capitalism has brought us this banal adoption of ‘capitalist consensus politics’ in the form of safe spaces, which is an insult to one’s intelligence.
Whether we like it or not, the whole concept of safe spaces is now bankrupt. The Left Unity conference in November 2014 voted clearly against the adoption of this policy, and there are dozens of other, sane ways of protecting women, minorities, LGBT comrades, the young, etc in an organisation of the left. A proper code of conduct can cover most eventualities. Adopting a safe spaces policy will stifle debate, and create endless divisions and needless disputes. It would be wishful thinking to believe that an LU safe spaces policy would avoid the pitfalls that are so obvious from the examples I have given from universities. In fact, it is easy to see how it could make Left Unity a laughing stock.
Let me repeat: we are not in the business of creating a therapeutic, safe environment for our members. We are for revolutionary change and for this we need discipline, and familiarity with, not protection from all the evils of the capitalist order - from war and exploitation to by-products such as racism, sexism and homophobia.
yassamine.mather@weeklyworker.co.uk
Notes
1. ‘The tyranny of safe spaces’ Weekly Worker November 20 2014.
2. www.bristolsu.org.uk/pageassets/activities/societies/roomandequipmentbookings/Safe-Space-Policy-motion.pdf.
3. www.theguardian.com/education/2015/feb/06/safe-space-or-free-speech-crisis-debate-uk-universities.
4. www.spiked-online.com/freespeechnow/fsn_article/banning-nietzsche-why-its-time-to-end-no-platform#.VS7QhvnF-pc.
5. www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/louise-pennington/triggering-jazz-hands_b_6940116.html.
6. www.spiked-online.com/freespeechnow/fsn_article/university-should-never-be-a-safe-space#.VS7S4PnF-pc.
7. www.indexoncensorship.org/2014/04/university-safe-place-safe-ideas.