
Like most law firms, we interview current law students in
the fall to identify those we will invite to work with us the following summer.
Those who join us are “summer associates,” and we have just bid adieu to a terrific
group from this summer. Summer associates who accept offers from the firm for
attorney positions will rejoin us after they complete their last year of law
school and take that little test called the bar exam.
For example, this month’s cover story in The Atlantic bemoans “the coddling
of the American mind” and asserts that college students’ increasing demand for
protection from words and ideas they find uncomfortable or offensive is ruining
education and taking a toll on students’ mental health. Of specific concern to
the article’s authors was the trending demand for “trigger warnings” and
students’ readiness to decry “microaggressions.” For the uninitiated, trigger
warnings are alerts that professors are expected to provide students before
they present material that could cause a strong emotional response; for
example, a Harvard law school professor has written about how criminal law
professors are being asked to warn
their classes before teaching rape law. In turn, “microaggressions” are slights,
sometimes defined as “environmental
indignities,” that, whether intentional or unintentional, communicate
something derogatory, such as a stereotype about a protected class.
The authors of the article in The Atlantic theorize that an educational culture that overprotects
students from exposure to potentially disturbing or uncomfortable ideas and
discourse negatively impacts students’ mental health. In addition, the authors
express concern that future workplaces could “be mired in unending litigation
if student expectations of safety [from words, ideas, and people that might
cause them emotional discomfort] are carried forward.”
A workplace where every instance of discomfort or disagreement
could lead to a lawsuit would indeed be a nightmare. But, there is good news
for employers. While courts stand ready to enforce anti-discrimination and
other employment laws, they are not generally friendly to the idea of
moderating garden-variety coworker conflicts or to acting as a super-personnel
department. The law does not create legal protection from every offense,
discomfort or “microaggression,” and employers have the right, so long as they
comply with applicable law, to set community standards at work that everyone
must follow.
Employers clearly must walk a tightrope of balancing
business needs, a tangle of regulations, and a minefield of interpersonal
dynamics. One of the best ways to avoid trouble is to create a culture where diversity
and respectful communication is the norm. While the “coddling of the American
mind” is certainly a point of concern, and taken to its extreme could create
disaster for the workplace if unintended slights become unlawful, I, for one, am
hopeful that the predicted “unending litigation” will not come to pass.
No comments:
Post a Comment