ABSTRACT
On what grounds do teachers claim the right to present material that some students may find objectionable? Focusing on a particular incident at a major American university, where a racial slur word was employed for the limited purpose of an educational exercise, issues of race and context are raised in an environment where cancel culture, safe space, and trigger warnings have become enmeshed in collective guilt, personal sensitivity, and the legitimacy of cultural and political institutions more widely. By connecting a single case to the broader American cultural scene, the chapter raises issues that are at the very center of how a nation may engage in a shared culture and the situations in which sensitive utterances are permissible without loss of legitimacy.
