Dive Brief:
- A conservative protest at DePaul University has left administrators scrambling to find a balance between activism, offense and free speech among its diverse students groups.
- The Chronicle of Higher Education profiles the growing difficulty for campuses like DePaul in trying to manage divergent social interests among students on shared campuses, which has bred racial threats and taunts for minority students, and complaints from conservative students decrying political correctness.
- The school has deployed university-wide bias response teams and guidance on free speech to quell the growing unrest among students.
Dive Insight:
When paired with the denouncement of "safe space" at the University of Chicago, there is a sense that the city of Chicago has an issue with race and racial tolerance on its college campuses. But outside of the Windy City, schools all over the country are trying to find ways to balance the need for campus diversity as a revenue and research driver, with the reality that pockets of dissenters will give the public impression that the majority of the student body opposes that racism.
The mission for college administrators is to broker opportunities and spaces for students to develop healthy self-expression, without creating movements of hostility or exclusion.