Campus grievance culture revisited

Last month there was a little ruckus over a questionnaire (DK) for a thesis project that two University of Copenhagen students sent to 7,000 other students over the University’s shared email system. One of the respondents hit Reply All and complained very politely, almost apologetically, that they [sic] couldn’t complete the questionnaire because it asked the subjects to identify themselves as male or female and the student was neither of those.

The student was attacked less politely in further replies by people who thought they were a whining snowflake or worse. Others asked for the administration to take action, particularly against the first student’s accusers. The associate dean explained that the administration hadn’t been aware of the inappropriate Reply All function in the email system and afterward shut down the system. He added that it is important to have a space where people can discuss topics such as sex, gender and identity, and it should preferably be offline.

Rules on outrage 
That was apparently the end of the incident. The most striking thing about the report is that it reminds us how little in Denmark we hear of the kind of culture wars that are raging in the US and the UK, particularly on campuses: bias reporting, protests, deplatforming, calls for resignation, self-censorship. Identity politics is hardly unknown here, but it doesn’t have a pervasive influence on academic life. In fact the most noteworthy recent event on this front was the University of Copenhagen’s revision of its guidelines on offensive behavior (DK) to define such behavior more narrowly.

The University had instituted a set of guidelines in 2018 after the so-called Sombrero Scandal in which students at the Law Faculty objected to costumes based on ethnic stereotypes at a Mexican theme party. The Faculty banned such parties, and a controversial debate on cultural appropriation and “offense-culture,” as it’s called here, ensued at the University. The result was a set of rules that defined offensive behavior very broadly as any action that caused a perception of violation on the part of an individual university employee or student; that is, any subjective feeling of harassment, discrimination or even discomfort. 

This is the key sentence: “It is the employee’s or student’s experience of having been subjected to offensive behavior that is the basis [of the case].”

Anything qualifies for a citizen’s arrest?
The guidelines in turn prompted a new debate about whether the criteria for an offense should be an individual’s opinion or more objective categories of behavior. They occasioned protests by some faculty members that they would hamper academic freedom, classroom discussion and research. This phase led to a re-evaluation and eventually a revision of the guidelines at the end of October of this year.

The new guidelines are no longer based on a subjective perception of violation but rather on the definition set forth by the Danish Working Environment Authority. The Authority’s definition also takes the individual’s experience as the starting point, regardless of whether or not the behavior arose from a deliberate intention to offend. But it makes an important qualification that an individual’s reaction is not automatically accepted as evidence of a violation:

“It is a case of offensive behavior when one or more persons grossly or repeatedly subject other persons to behavior that is perceived by the latter as demeaning. This implies that there may be situations in which a person feels violated but management determines that it was not offensive behavior.” (my translation)

Rolling back the presumption of guilt
The new guidelines state that they do not cover referrals from students about the content or methods of teaching or about teaching assignments. They also set forth a procedure for persons who feel violated: First they should object or refuse to participate in the situation, and then they should speak to others about the incident and possibly to their manager or administrator. For their part, managers should investigate the circumstances that led to the report before opening a formal case. 

These are significant changes not only because they moderate the policy but also because they defer to the civil rights that apply to society as a whole and do not treat students as a vulnerable class in need of special indulgence. Students are already protected by laws against discrimination and harassment that protect all citizens. The University opted out of the more expansive conception of harm that can be problematic to implement and that can have negative consequences for the fundamental principle of free expression. 

Uncommon sense 
The University Rector, Henrik Wegener, explains that the guidelines are intended to balance the interests of academic freedom and need for students and employees to feel that they are in a safe environment. That sounds like obvious common sense, but the University’s position doesn’t appear to be a very common viewpoint on American campuses. One problem with the welfare state is that once a social group receives a specific benefit, it becomes almost impossible to scale it back, even if economic or other factors argue for doing so. The same may be the case for the burgeoning diversity and inclusion bureaucracy in the US that has a vested interest in its own prohibitions.