Dweck states, “From their more fixed mindset perspective, their intelligence had been up for judgment, and they failed. Instead of luxuriating in the power of yet, they were gripped in the tyranny of now” (00:35). Dweck’s idea of a fixed mindset can be applied to many different situations. Most definitely, it can be applied to any situation were someone has been put in an uncomfortable situation, such as when a trigger warning has not been used.
L/H state, “According to the most-basic tenets of psychology, helping people with anxiety disorders avoid the things they fear is misguided” (paragraph 4). Essentially, this means that you are only hurting people more by allowing them to cower away from their fears. Using trigger warnings at such a high extent is keeping people stuck in their fears, they will never be able to overcome them.
L/H state, “Thomas Jefferson, upon founding the University of Virginia, said: ‘This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.’ We believe that this is still—and will always be—the best attitude for American universities. Faculty, administrators, students, and the federal government all have a role to play in restoring universities to their historic mission” (final paragraph). I believe that in saying this, they assume that everything our fore fathers have said are the undeniable truth. While in a perfect world we would have fool proof plans laid out for us by those who came before, I believe it is not only naive but ignorant to think this.
L/H state, “If campus culture conveys the idea that visitors must be pure, with résumés that never offend generally left-leaning campus sensibilities, then higher education will have taken a further step toward intellectual homogeneity and the creation of an environment in which students rarely encounter diverse viewpoints” (need to figure out p #). In focusing on their strong beliefs of too much sensitivity in the world, they fail to realize that they have just contributed to the polarization of the parties they deemed part of the problem of today. Just because a campus is “left-leaning” does not mean it is hypercritical of anything, that just follows stereotypes instead of actually researching the university.
