The Coddling of the American Mind

by Greg Lukianoff

  Reports from around the country are remarkably similar: students at many colleges today are walking on eggshells, afraid of saying the wrong thing, liking the wrong post, or coming to the defense of someone whom they know to be innocent, out of fear that they themselves will be called out by a mob on social media.71 Conor Friedersdorf, who writes about higher education at The Atlantic, looked into the matter in response to our original “Coddling” article in 2015. Students told him things like this: “Students get worked up over the smallest of issues . . . which has led to the disintegration of school spirit and the fracture of campus.” And this, from another student:

  I probably hold back 90 percent of the things that I want to say due to fear of being called out. . . . People won’t call you out because your opinion is wrong. People will call you out for literally anything. On Twitter today I came across someone making fun of a girl who made a video talking about how much she loved God and how she was praying for everyone. There were hundreds of comments, rude comments, below the video. It was to the point that they weren’t even making fun of what she was standing for. They were picking apart everything. Her eyebrows, the way her mouth moves, her voice, the way her hair was parted. Ridiculous.72

  In this comment, we can begin to see the way that social media amplifies the cruelty and “virtue signaling” that are recurrent features of call-out culture. (Virtue signaling refers to the things people say and do to advertise that they are virtuous. This helps them stay within the good graces of their team.) Mobs can rob good people of their conscience, particularly when participants wear masks (in a real mob) or are hiding behind an alias or avatar (in an online mob). Anonymity fosters deindividuation—the loss of an individual sense of self—which lessens self-restraint and increases one’s willingness to go along with the mob.73

  The intellectual devastation wrought by this way of thinking can be seen in a report from Trent Eady, a young Canadian queer activist who escaped from this mindset in 2014. He then wrote an essay titled “‘Everything Is Problematic’: My Journey Into the Centre of a Dark Political World, and How I Escaped.” Eady identifies four features of the culture: dogmatism, groupthink, a crusader mentality, and anti-intellectualism. Of greatest relevance to the Untruth of Us Versus Them, he wrote:

  Thinking this way quickly divides the world into an ingroup and an outgroup—believers and heathens, the righteous and the wrong-teous. . . . Every minor heresy inches you further away from the group. When I was part of groups like this, everyone was on exactly the same page about a suspiciously large range of issues. Internal disagreement was rare.74

  It is difficult to imagine a culture that is more antithetical to the mission of a university.75

  The Power of Common Humanity Today

  Michelle Alexander, in her best-selling book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,76 illustrates what happens to the millions of black men dragged into the criminal justice system—often for possession or use of small amounts of marijuana. They are released into a society where they struggle to find jobs, are disqualified from state benefits, and sometimes face the loss of the right to vote, leading to an “undercaste” in American society that is in some ways reminiscent of the Jim Crow South.

  The book has had a powerful impact on the political left, but the issues it raises resonate across the political spectrum. In books like Radley Balko’s Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces77 and FIRE cofounder Harvey Silverglate’s Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent,78 libertarians have expressed opposition to both overpolicing and the excesses of the war on drugs. The conservative group Right on Crime opposes overcriminalization, mass incarceration, and the drug war.79 There are opportunities for real cooperation on serious but potentially solvable issues.80

  For activists seeking reform, the lesson is to find common ground. Marches and rallies are good for energizing your “team,” but as Columbia University professor of humanities Mark Lilla points out in his book The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics, they are not enough to bring about lasting change. You have to win elections to do that, and to win elections, you have to draw in very large numbers of people from diverse groups. Lilla argues that the left did that successfully from the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt through the Great Society era of the 1960s, but then it took a wrong turn into a new, more divisive, and less successful kind of politics:

  Instead they threw themselves into the movement politics of identity, losing a sense of what we share as citizens and what binds us as a nation. An image for Roosevelt liberalism and the unions that supported it was that of two hands shaking. A recurring image of identity liberalism is that of a prism refracting a single beam of light into its constituent colors, producing a rainbow. This says it all.81

  Yet appeals to common humanity still work just as well today as when Dr. King made them. On September 16, 2017, on the National Mall in Washington, DC, a group of Trump supporters organized a rally they called “the Mother of All Rallies Patriot Unification Gathering.”82 Counterprotesters from Black Lives Matter (BLM) showed up and shouted at the Trump supporters. The Trump supporters shouted back. Someone onstage told the Trump supporters to pay no attention to the counterprotesters: “They don’t exist,” he said. Hawk Newsome, the leader of the BLM counterprotesters, later said that he expected to “stand there with [his] fist in the air in a very militant way and to exchange insults.” Tensions mounted, and onlookers recorded video of the potentially explosive situation. Then the Trump rally organizer, who goes by the name Tommy Gunn, took the stage. “It’s about freedom of speech,” he said. And in an unexpected move, he invited Newsome and other BLM supporters onto the stage. “We’re going to give you two minutes of our platform to put your message out,” Gunn told Newsome. “Now, whether they disagree or agree with your message is irrelevant. It’s the fact that you have the right to have the message.”

  Newsome took the stage. “I am an American,” he began, and the crowd cheered. “And the beauty of America is that when you see something broke in your country, you can mobilize to fix it.” But then, as he spoke about a black man being killed by police, the crowd began to turn on him. They booed. “Shut up! That was a criminal!” a woman shouted. Newsome explained, “We are not anti-cop!” “Yes, you are!” people shouted. “We’re anti–bad cop!” Newsome insisted. He still seemed to be losing them. “We don’t want handouts,” he told the crowd. “We don’t want anything that is yours. We want our God-given right to freedom, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Now they were coming back around. People cheered. Someone in the crowd shouted, “All lives matter!” which is usually intended as a rebuke to those who say that “black lives matter.” But Newsome responded in the tradition of Pauli Murray, by drawing a larger circle around everyone in the crowd: “You’re right, my brother, you’re right. You are so right. All lives matter, right? But when a black life is lost, we get no justice. That is why we say ‘black lives matter.’ . . . If we really want to make America great, we do it together.”

  The crowd cheered and chanted “USA-USA . . .” In an instant, the two groups were no longer “us” and “them.” Their ideological differences remained, but within that larger circle around them, their enmity melted away. And, at least for a short while, they interacted as fellow human beings and fellow Americans. “It kind of restored my faith,” Newsome said when interviewed afterward. “Two sides that never listen to each other actually made progress today.”83 One of the leaders of Bikers for Trump came up to Newsome afterward and shook his hand. The two men talked and then posed for a photo together, with Newsome holding the other man’s young son cradled in his arm.

  In Sum

  The human mind evolved for living in tribes that engaged in frequent (and often violent) conflict; our modern-day minds readily divide the world into “us” and “them,” even on trivial or arbitrary criteria, as Henri Tajfel’s psychol
ogical experiments demonstrated.

  Identity politics takes many forms. Some forms, such as that practiced by Martin Luther King, Jr., and Pauli Murray, can be called common-humanity identity politics, because its practitioners humanize their opponents and appeal to their humanity while also applying political pressure in other ways.

  Common-enemy identity politics, on the other hand, tries to unite a coalition using the psychology embedded in the Bedouin proverb “I against my brothers. I and my brothers against my cousins. I and my brothers and my cousins against the world.” It is used on the far right as well as the far left.

  Intersectionality is a popular intellectual framework on campuses today; certain versions of it teach students to see multiple axes of privilege and oppression that intersect. While there are merits to the theory, the way it is interpreted and practiced on campus can sometimes amplify tribal thinking and encourage students to endorse the Untruth of Us Versus Them: Life is a battle between good people and evil people.

  Common-enemy identity politics, when combined with microaggression theory, produces a call-out culture in which almost anything one says or does could result in a public shaming. This can engender a sense of “walking on eggshells,” and it teaches students habits of self-censorship. Call-out cultures are detrimental to students’ education and bad for their mental health. Call-out cultures and us-versus-them thinking are incompatible with the educational and research missions of universities, which require free inquiry, dissent, evidence-based argument, and intellectual honesty.

  This concludes Part I of this book. In these three chapters, we presented three really bad ideas and showed how each one meets the three criteria for being called a Great Untruth, which we laid out in the introductory chapter: it contradicts ancient wisdom, it contradicts modern psychological research on flourishing, and it harms the individuals and communities that embrace it. In Part II, we’ll examine some dramatic recent events on campus that have been incomprehensible to many outside observers. We’ll show that these events become much more intelligible once you understand the three Great Untruths and their effects on individuals and on groups.

  PART II

  Bad Ideas in Action

  CHAPTER 4

  Intimidation and Violence

  When we dehumanise and demonise our opponents, we abandon the possibility of peacefully resolving our differences, and seek to justify violence against them.

  NELSON MANDELA1

  On the night of February 1, 2017, the University of California’s Berkeley campus exploded into violence. An estimated 1,500 protesters surrounded the building where Milo Yiannopoulos, a young, British, gay Trump supporter, was scheduled to speak. Yiannopoulos was formerly an editor at Breitbart News, a principal outlet of the “alt-right” movement that had come to national prominence during the previous year’s presidential campaign. He had been banned from Twitter the summer before when Twitter concluded that he had violated its policy regarding “inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others.”2 Yiannopoulos was a skilled provocateur—a master of the art of triggering outrage and then using that outrage to embarrass his opponents and advance his goals.3

  The protesters’ goal was to prevent the speech from happening. Many of them came from local radical anarchist groups that call themselves “antifascists,” or “Antifa.”4 UC Berkeley officials claimed5 that only about 150 of the protesters were responsible for the vandalism and violence that ensued—knocking down a light generator;6 shooting commercial-grade fireworks7 into buildings8 and at police officers;9 smashing ATMs;10 setting fires;11 dismantling barricades12 and using them (as well as bats)13 to break windows; throwing rocks at police officers;14 and even hurling Molotov cocktails.15 The property damage (exceeding $500,000 for the university and town combined)16 was less chilling, however, than the physical attacks on students and others who attempted to attend the speech.

  One man carrying a sign saying “The First Amendment is for everyone” was hit in the face, leaving him bloody.17 Others also suffered bloodying blows to the face and head as protesters attacked with fists, pipes, sticks, and poles.18 Recorded on video, a young woman sporting a red MAKE BITCOIN GREAT AGAIN baseball cap told a reporter, “I’m looking to make a statement by just being here, and I think the protesters are doing the same. Props to the ones who are doing it non-violently, but I think that’s a very rare thing indeed.” As she turned, the camera caught a black-gloved hand pepper-spraying her in the face.19

  Masked Antifa protesters clad in black used flagpoles to batter a woman and her husband as they were pinned against metal barriers, unable to get away. The woman, Katrina Redelsheimer, was clubbed on the head, and her husband, John Jennings, was struck in the temple and began to bleed. Immediately afterward, other protesters blinded the couple and three of their friends by spraying them in the eyes with mace. As the friends cried for help, protesters punched them and hit them in the head with sticks, until onlookers pulled the victims over the barricades. Meanwhile, five or six protesters dragged Jennings a few feet away, where they kicked and beat him until bystanders pulled attackers off him as he lost consciousness.20 The police, according to Redelsheimer, had by this point barricaded themselves inside a building, refusing people entrance—which she learned when someone tried to help her get into the building to rinse her eyes and the police turned them away.21 Meanwhile, Pranav Jandhyala, a UC Berkeley student journalist and self-described “moderate liberal,” who used his cell phone to record events as they unfolded, was attacked by protesters, who tried to take his phone.22 When he fled, they chased him, punching him in the head, beating him with sticks, and calling him a “neo-Nazi.”23

  The mob got its way. The speech was canceled. Police issued a “shelter-in-place” campus lockdown order24 and escorted Yiannopoulos to an undisclosed location.25

  This all happened just ten days after Donald Trump’s inauguration as president. Tensions across the country were high, and the president’s inaugural address and first executive orders (among them, to close the borders to people from seven Muslim-majority countries)26 did little to calm them. The fact that some Berkeley students and residents reacted strongly to an anticipated speech by a pro-Trump provocateur does not prove that they are closed-minded or fearful of every idea they don’t like. But it’s important to take a close look at the February 1 riots at UC Berkeley, because they marked a turning point—an escalation of conflicts over campus speakers. Berkeley and its aftermath were the start of a new and more dangerous era. Since then, many students on the left have become increasingly receptive to the idea that violence is sometimes justified as a response to speech they believe is “hateful.” At the same time, many students on the right have become increasingly eager to invite speakers that are likely to provoke a reaction from the left.

  Some early reports claimed that the violent, mask-wearing “black bloc” protesters were outside agitators, not students from UC Berkeley.27 It is impossible to know how many Berkeley students took part, because the university never undertook a public investigation into the riots to determine precisely who the black bloc protesters were. One UC Berkeley employee bragged on social media about beating Jennings—even posting a photo of Jennings unconscious on the ground—and several Berkeley students admitted that they had participated.28 One student who wrote about having joined Antifa explained in an op-ed that “black bloc tactics” (dressing in black, wearing black gloves, and masking faces) were used that night “to protect the identities of the individuals in the bloc,” and asserted that “behind those bandanas and black T-shirts were the faces of your fellow UC Berkeley [students].”

  The failure of UC Berkeley to openly discipline any of the students who engaged in violence or vandalism during the mayhem29—even those who publicly admitted participating—and the fact that the police arrested just one person that night (for failure to disperse)30 seems to have taught the protesters an important
lesson: Violence works. Unsurprisingly, the Antifa activists built on their success by threatening more violence in response to campus invitations to conservatives David Horowitz, Ann Coulter, and Ben Shapiro.31

  The “Milo riot” at UC Berkeley caught the attention of the national and international media, not only because of its scale but because of its symbolism. This was, after all, the very place where the campus free speech movement started. In 1964, when left-leaning students demanded the right to advocate for political causes and hear controversial political speakers, Berkeley student Mario Savio, the leader of the movement, famously spoke of freedom of speech as “something that represents the very dignity of what a human being is.”32 Savio had marched with the civil rights movement in Mississippi the summer before, and, inspired by the power of their peaceful tactics, he began working for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee when he returned to campus. It was that activity that first brought him into conflict with university authorities, leading up to his impassioned activism for free speech.33 The fact that in 2017, Berkeley students were protesting to shut down a speech—and even using vandalism and violence to do it—seemed ironic to many observers. Particularly troubling were the ways in which some Berkeley students justified the violence.

  Words Are Violence; Violence Is Safety

  A few days after the riot, The Daily Californian, UC Berkeley’s leading student newspaper, ran five op-eds under the headline VIOLENCE AS SELF-DEFENSE,34 all of which offer examples of the Great Untruths and illustrate the cognitive distortions we described in chapter 2.