What&#x27;s wrong with this line of thinking is shoveling food in someone&#x27;s mouth without permission is physical assault and voicing an opinion in a public space is not even close. You do not have a right not to hear ideas you don&#x27;t agree with, because if such a right existed in a world with such diverse opinions, no one could ever open their mouth. Censorship of opposing ideas carries a very real and very significant cost which I believe outweighs, by orders of magnitude, any perceived benefits. The real world doesn&#x27;t come with trigger warnings pasted on every surface and prefacing every human interaction, and I think neither should a university.<p>Obviously there are shades of gray depending on the particular speech, and we&#x27;ve collectively drawn a line around certain speech (call it &quot;hate speech&quot;) which we do believe should be censored. Otherwise, the correct response to speech you don&#x27;t agree with is <i>more speech</i> ideally in the form of reasoned and well-informed debate of the issues.<p>What I find the most perplexing is how, in many cases it seems like the original speech which was deemed offensive or victimizing, which typically itself was not even directed at the &quot;victim&quot;, is answered in return with extreme prejudice and hate directly aimed at the original speaker. This can also be combined with a social media campaign to attempt to politicize the whole event and inflict maximum damage. This is why I am often confused as to who is the real victim in these cases.<p>The ad blocker analogy is interesting. Even blocking ads is somewhat contentious  (e.g. lawsuits against DVRs with 30-second skip buttons, site owners saying their revenue stream has been decimated, etc.) and this is simply users controlling what their own devices are doing! Blocking an ad might deprive a site of revenue, but it doesn&#x27;t deprive anyone else of their voice -- no one is being censored.<p>You say we surely allow people to shovel words into our brains... Hearing speech you don&#x27;t like is one thing, but what about someone else taking their own inability to function in a diverse culture, and using it to dictate the words anyone who happens to be around them are allowed to speak? This sounds like a case where the medicine is worse than the disease.<p>The biggest problem with &quot;safe spaces&quot; is that they are not actually limited to small rooms in the student union with play-dough and elevator music, but I think a lot of people are very concerned that the intent is ultimately for the entire campus to be policed like one. And I do mean policed, because stepping afoul of the mythical safe space code of conduct is taken as a capital offense, to which you may see literal rioting in response.