Bike!Bike! 2016

Exploring the Unwanted: embracing discomfort for personal growth.

Trigger warnings, safe spaces, disinviting speakers to college campuses and the removal of centuries old art in Universities has increased in the last few years. Critics of these actions are asking the question - is this harming our ability to tolerate ideas we may not agree with and adding to the increased divisions seen in our communities and on the political stage? Are these actions still serving the same purpose they were meant to when they were first implemented?

In a recent New York Times, piece, Lionel Shriver asked: 

In an era of weaponized sensitivity, participation in public discourse is growing so perilous, so fraught with the danger of being called out for using the wrong word or failing to uphold the latest orthodoxy in relation to disability, sexual orientation, economic class, race or ethnicity, that many are apt to bow out.

But do we really want every intellectual conversation to be scrupulously cleansed of any whiff of controversy? Will people, so worried about inadvertently giving offense, avoid those with different backgrounds altogether?

Recently a black college professor on Oakland California proposed the following to her students:

Write a research paper REFUTING my published paper which argues that black children experience discrimination in American school systems.

Is this professor part of a budding movement away from restricting unpopular or offensive ideas?

This workshop intends to discuss embracing discomfort as a means by which to expand our way of thinking about controversial ideas and exploring them objectively, and how collectives may be able to grow by allowing the discussion of challenging institutional beliefs.