jonathan haidt the coddling of the american mind

The ultimate aim, it seems, is to turn campuses into “safe spaces” where young adults are shielded from words and ideas that make some uncomfortable. More than the last, it pre- sumes an extraordinary fragility of the collegiate psyche, and therefore elevates the goal of protecting students from psycho- logical harm. The current movement is largely about emotional well-being. That movement sought to restrict speech (speciﬁcally hate speech aimed at marginalized groups), but it also challenged the liter- ary, philosophical, and historical canon, seeking to widen it by including more-diverse perspectives.

That’s partly right, al- though there are important diﬀerences between what’s hap- pening now and what happened in the 1 980s and ’90s. The list of offensive statements included: “America is the land of opportunity” and “I believe the most qualiﬁed person should get the job.” The press has typically described these developments as a resurgence of political correctness. President Trump is only the most vulgar and powerful of those willing to say that “ political correctness is killing our country.System schools were presented by administrators at faculty leader-trai ning sessions with examples of microaggr essions. than at any other recent period in peacetime in American history.” By the 1990s, it was common knowledge that you could attract a crowd of supporters by attacking political correctness, and in recent years we have seen no end of folks with access to a keyboard or a microphone complaining about PC college students, those “ excellent sheep,” in William Deresiewicz’s memorable phrase. In that same decade, former leftist Sidney Hook whined that “there is less freedom of speech on American campuses today.

In the 1980s, Allan Bloom transformed himself from hedonistic mandarin professor to best-selling conservative scold by excoriating students for their addiction to rock music and deafness to the higher pleasures of Straussian contemplation.

In the late 1960s, Ronald Reagan built his political career in California on his hostility to the spoiled, un-American dissidents protesting in Berkeley. Old folks just don’t understand what’s going on with college students, and that makes them feel out of touch, unsympathetic to the young.

Jonathan haidt the coddling of the american mind