No Safe Spaces

The documentary No Safe Spaces focuses on a campaign by conservative talk-radio host Dennis Prager and comedian and podcast superstar Adam Carolla to counter the vocal, sometimes violent left-wing activists who are silencing opposing voices on American college campuses. It’s a trend the film firmly establishes with many examples of the career destruction of seemingly innocent people who stood up against what they saw as excesses of identity politics.

Whether or not you like or agree with the self-promoting hosts, the documentary raises a lot of vital questions worth examining, and first-time filmmaker Justin Folk has assembled a slick package, full of stimulating case studies and intelligent assessments of what “freedom of speech” should mean in practice. It has its biases — what documentary doesn’t? — missteps and omissions, such as slim background info on controversial figures, including Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, the hosts and others. (I had to look them all up later.)

In the end, the film makes a good case for favoring even heated, occasionally uncivil debate over the silencing of unpleasant speech. But it also suffers somewhat from the “very fine people on both sides” problem: It acknowledges that some speech can be censored for inciting violence but doesn’t want to grapple with any messy definitions, and it never attempts to draw a clear line between speech and action — a necessary starting point to finding workable solutions. The truth is, Prager and Carolla are pundits who thrive on the debate and have no obligation to offer any solution more practical than “have courage.”