United States of the Traumatized!

In November of 2006--yes, twelve years ago--a faculty "colleague" emailed me, in which he wrote:

I did lack a bit of courtesy; however, if you are going to exist in an administrative/director position at any level at any university I suggest you quickly develop a thicker skin...faculty are frequently, mostly without intention, discourteous and disrespectful.

In another context more than a decade ago, a philosophy professor had some choice words for me in his lengthy email: "please shut up."

It is an endless list of faculty freely dishing out.  The irony is that many of these are the same ones who "fight" to protect students from words and ideas!

Of course, way back in graduate school, I had been educated enough on how unprofessional faculty can be.  I was mentally prepared for what academia will be.  But, every unprofessional response was a shock that continued to shatter into a million pieces the noble ideal, if ever it existed, of a Socratic exchange of ideas.

It is not only in academia.  Everywhere, all the way from the current Oval Office, people seem to simultaneously exhibit two attitudes: One in which they seem to want to always hit below the belt, and another in which they constantly whine that their feelings are being upset.  Bizarre!

So, what can be done?

[If] we are going to beat back the regressive populism, mendacity and hyperpolarization in which we are currently mired, we are going to need an educated citizenry fluent in a wise and universal liberalism. This liberalism will neither play down nor fetishize identity grievances, but look instead for a common and generous language to build on who we are more broadly, and to conceive more boldly what we might be able to accomplish in concert. Yet as the tenuousness of even our most noble and seemingly durable civil rights gains grows more apparent by the news cycle, we must also reckon with the possibility that a full healing may forever lie on the horizon. And so we will need citizens who are able to find ways to move on despite this, without letting their discomfort traumatize or consume them. If the American university is not the space to cultivate this strong and supple liberalism, then we are in deep and lasting trouble.  

Nope, the university has long ceased to be place for the professional and courteous battle of ideas.

Source