You have a very narrow view of universities and higher learning throughout history. The ancient Greek and Arab traditions in academia were very much that of open discourse and the pursuit of enlightenment through knowledge, not the entrenching of white males or indeed any other majority.

>The ancient Greek and Arab traditions in academia were very much that of open discourse and the pursuit of enlightenment through knowledge, not the entrenching of white males or indeed any other majority

Yes, all those slave-owning Greeks and Arabs were really the pinnacle of open discourse and the pursuit of enlightenment. There was definitely no social model they intended to enforce on others, and their universities were bastions of openness. Truly.

Huh, I had a feeling someone would do a post-modernist-style critique of ancient higher learning academies. Look, no one is saying that ancient societies were perfect; but seeing as they literally invented the concepts of a platonic institute for higher learning and for the gathering of knowledge for human progress, I think we can cut them some slack for being inhabitants of their eras. The same way that, gosh, I hope your descendants cut you some slack for being an inhabitant of a savage era of worldwide conflict, poverty, materialism and food shortage, not to mention environmental degradation.

Why should anyone be cut any slack? We can all clearly see the trend of moral progress and we should all be able to extrapolate from it. Progressivism wins and reactionism loses. But even with a myopic view of history, you have to be truly willfully blind to ignore the liberatory struggles that have existed as long as oppression. Slaves have always revolted.

There is nothing "post-modern" about this either. My ideologies are as modernist as they come, and it's clear to me that the ancient Greeks were in no way in favor of some platonic ideal of open, free discourse. They didn't let allow women or slaves in their open, free discourse, and even if they did, but shouted them down (as antagonists of safer spaces are doing in this thread, the University of Chicago, and virtually every other space, because oppression is the default, liberation is something you have to actively build), that would not make the discourse any more free or open. You're not being "anti-postmodern," you're just being willfully blind of savage inequities in the institutions you're holding up as examples. If you didn't want that contradiction examined you shouldn't have spoken up. (And don't even think about complaining about being called out for this -- what do you want, some ``safe space'' where you can just pat yourself on the back with other slavery apologists?)

> We can all clearly see the trend of moral progress and we should all be able to extrapolate from it. Progressivism wins and reactionism loses

Many people do not agree with that and not just reactionaries. A majority of philosophers (natural + unnatural) and religions in history would have explained their world by cycles. There are a great many events, many disturbing to the happy-go-lucky narrative that the Progressivism Forever hypothesis fails to explain.

I take the point that Cthulhu swims slowly leftwards but without understanding why it is that he does so it is dangerous to extrapolate for the next 300 years.

Ad hominem? Did I get the spelling right?

They will be even better when we don't infantilize minorities by acting like we need the degenerated versions of these concepts.

To be fair, I don't think it's minorities that are asking for trigger warnings. They are groups with political agendas.

That is true. As many of you know there are an unusual number of transgender/sexual in the tech/geek communities and in my experience they get along with those of a conservative or christian bent and often have healthy non-rancorous debates with them. Perhaps they are supposed to be at war and some of them are but I don't see it. I think it helps a lot that people identify as geeks first so in a hackerspace it is assumed we're all in the same tribe, trying to be interesting people doing interesting things.

> That's an ideal that was never really true.

Sure it was. In the 1960s and 70s, for example, when Universities were a hotbed of free speech and civil liberty activism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Speech_Movement

The interesting thing about the FSM speicifically is that was exclusively at Berkeley.

It is true that there were significant student protest movements at many universities in the 60's and 70's.

I don't think that this invalidates the OP's point that "historically, a major function of universities has been being places where white male elites could congregate and maintain their power by excluding others".

Look over the last 200 years or so of universities in the US. It's only since the 1950's that non-whites and females started attending in significant numbers.

Even if we take 1970 as a cut-off where that is no-longer the majority case, the OP's point is still valid.

When people call for universities to return to being a place for the free and open exchange of ideas, I think this is exactly what many of them want universities to return to being.

Take, for example, the Yale Halloween controversy, where supporters of this ideal fought hard to protect white male students from the idea that their costumes were mocking others because it might make them uncomfortable wearing them, and that violated their free speech somehow.

Or take the conservative activist who was so outraged at a left-wing poem in a newsletter that he barged into the office of a professor involved with it, demanding to know who "approved" the offending article and refusing to leave, and how groups like FIRE and all the other vocal supporters of the free end open exchange of ideas insisted his actions were a valent stand for the freedom of student speech.