Ava Nabatkhoran
Ava’s bio:
Ava Nabatkhoran is a political science Macaulay student on the pre-law track. With a strong interest in constitutional law, she plans on being an advocate and a fierce protector of justice for those in her community. Today we live in a polarized society, where disagreements are omnipresent. Nabatkhoran hopes to be an elected official and bring people together.
An except from Ava'’s essay, titled “(Trigger) Warning: Free Speech on College Campuses is Evolving”:
Unfortunately, you can’t educate people if they just speak to provoke others, and that is the line I draw between hate speech and truly ignorant and insensitive free speech. Once you start talking not to add onto the conversation, but intentionally hurt others, your constitutional claim is no longer valid. We aren’t mind readers, so we can’t tell what someone is thinking when they speak, but we can ask them to elaborate. When the student elaborates on their point, we can then see their intent and most of the time, there is no malice attached to it and it is an issue of poor delivery, and the student can be more mindful for the future.
There is a teachable moment in every situation, and while it may take a while to find, I promise you it is there. After the whole incident that happened in colloquium, the Honors Program is now more aware of the free speech problem that all colleges face, and they are more aware about what John Jay values. Rather than forgetting the incident, the program is having difficult conversations and learning from their mistakes because it would be ignorant to think there will never be another free speech dispute, and this is the right thing to do.
Trigger warnings, for instance, are a newer subsection in the free speech debate and now colleges have to make a decision, while still trying to make everyone happy. Older generations think that the younger generation is getting coddled due to all the politically correct language we use along with the safe spaces and trigger warnings, and colleges need to prove the older generations wrong. After you leave college you need to be prepared for what life throws at you, and colleges can only provide a safe haven for so long.
Students should feel safe to come to school and learn but should expect to be challenged. It is hard to draw a line between keeping students safe from discomfort while still preparing them for the real world, but it is not impossible. It’s also not impossible to carry out all the objectives such as fulfilling a mission statement, challenging students, protecting students, and “customer satisfaction”, and still protecting free speech. Both of my parents are immigrants, so I understand the importance and value of free speech, but I’m also a very empathetic person and can understand the power of total free speech. However, I still think more speech is better than no speech. In addition to that, we need to listen. We need to learn how to listen to others no matter how abhorrent they may be. Students don’t need to learn how to agree, but they need to learn how to listen.
Read Nabatkhoran’s full essay titled, “(Trigger) Warning: Free Speech on College Campuses Is Evolving” as published by John Jay’s Finest (pp. 6-14).