The Coddling of the American Mind

by Greg Lukianoff

  The feminism I identified with as a student stressed independence and resilience. In the intervening years, the climate of sanctimony about student vulnerability has grown too thick to penetrate; no one dares question it lest you’re labeled antifeminist.58

  Kipnis’s essay criticized Northwestern’s sexual misconduct policies—in particular, the prohibition on romantic relationships between adult students and faculty or staff. She also mentioned a graduate student’s Title IX complaint against a professor. After her article was published, Kipnis was the target of protests from student activists, who carried mattresses across campus and demanded that the administration condemn the article. Then two graduate students filed a Title IX complaint against Kipnis, claiming that her article created a hostile environment. This resulted in a secret Title IX investigation of Kipnis that lasted seventy-two days.59 (It ended after she published another article in the Chronicle, titled “My Title IX Inquisition.”) When she wrote a book about her experience, she was subjected to yet another Title IX investigation, this time stemming from complaints by four Northwestern faculty members and six graduate students, who claimed that her book’s discussion of both Title IX and false sexual misconduct accusations violated the university’s policies on retaliation and sexual harassment.60 This second investigation lasted a month. She was asked to respond to more than eighty written questions about her book and to turn over her source material.61 While both of these investigations were eventually dropped, from beginning to end, the process took more than two years.62

  Kipnis noted after her ordeal:

  My sense was that all of these protections were not making people less vulnerable, they were making people more vulnerable. . . . [Students are] going to be impeded when they leave university and go out into the world, and nobody is going to protect them from the multitudes of injuries and slights and that kind of thing that we all have to deal with in the course of daily life.63

  How to Foster Moral Dependency

  In a prescient essay in 2014, two sociologists—Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning—explained where this new culture of vulnerability came from and how administrative actions helped it to grow.64 They called it “victimhood culture,” and they interpreted it as a new moral order that was in conflict with the older “dignity culture,” which is still dominant in most parts of the United States and other Western democracies.

  In an optimally functioning dignity culture, people are assumed to have dignity and worth regardless of what others think of them, so they are not expected to react too strongly to minor slights. Of course, full dignity was at one time accorded only to adult, white men; the rights revolutions of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries did essential work to expand dignity to all. This is in contrast to the older “honor cultures,” in which men were so obsessed with guarding their reputations that they were expected to react violently to minor insults made against them or those close to them—perhaps with a challenge to a duel. In a dignity culture, however, dueling seems ridiculous. People are expected to have enough self-control to shrug off irritations, slights, and minor conflicts as they pursue their own projects. For larger conflicts or violations of one’s rights, there are reliable legal or administrative remedies, but it would be undignified to call for such help for small matters, which one should be able to resolve on one’s own. Perspective is a key element of a dignity culture; people don’t view disagreements, unintentional slights, or even direct insults as threats to their dignity that must always be met with a response.

  For example, one clear sign of a dignity culture is that children learn some version of “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never harm me.” That childhood saying is of course not literally true—people feel real pain as a result of words. (If no one felt hurt by words, the saying would never be needed.) But “sticks and stones” is a shield that children in a dignity culture use to dismiss an insult with contemptuous indifference, as if to say, “Go ahead and insult me. You cannot upset me. I really don’t care what you think.”

  In 2013, Campbell and Manning began noticing the same changes on campus that Greg had been noticing—the interlocking set of new ideas about microaggressions, trigger warnings, and safe spaces. They noted that the emerging morality of victimhood culture was radically different from dignity culture. They defined a victimhood culture as having three distinct attributes: First, “individuals and groups display high sensitivity to slight”; second, they “have a tendency to handle conflicts through complaints to third parties”; and third, they “seek to cultivate an image of being victims who deserve assistance.”65

  Of special relevance to our concerns in this chapter is the second attribute. Campbell and Manning pointed out that the presence of administrators or legal authorities who can be persuaded to take one’s side and intervene is a prerequisite for the emergence of victimhood culture. They noted that when administrative remedies are easily available and there is no shame in calling on them, it can lead to a condition known as “moral dependence.” People come to rely on external authorities to resolve their problems, and, over time, “their willingness or ability to use other forms of conflict management may atrophy.”66

  This is the concern that Kipnis voiced when she said that overprotective policies make students more vulnerable instead of less, and that schools are creating a culture of vulnerability. This is the concern that Erika Christakis expressed when she wrote that “the growing tendency to cultivate vulnerability in students carries unacknowledged costs,” and asked students to talk to each other rather than relying on administrative interventions.67 And it’s the same concern about overprotection that prompted Lenore Skenazy to start the Free-Range Kids movement.

  It is also the concern that Steven Horwitz raised (and we discussed at the end of chapter 9) about oversupervision impeding the development of the art of association. A university that encourages moral dependence is a university that is likely to experience chronic conflict, which may then lead to more demands for administrative remedies and protections, which may then lead to more moral dependence.

  In Sum

  The growth of campus bureaucracy and the expansion of its protective mission is our fifth explanatory thread.

  Administrators generally have good intentions; they are trying to protect the university and its students. But good intentions can sometimes lead to policies that are bad for students. At Northern Michigan University, a policy that we assume was designed to protect the university from liability led to inhumane treatment of students seeking therapy.

  In response to a variety of factors, including federal mandates and the risk of lawsuits, the number of campus administrators has grown more rapidly than the number of professors, and professors have gradually come to play a smaller role in the administration of universities. The result has been a trend toward “corporatization.”

  At the same time, market pressures, along with an increasingly consumerist mentality about higher education, have encouraged universities to compete on the basis of the amenities they offer, leading them to think of students as customers whom they must please.

  Campus administrators must juggle many responsibilities and protect the university from many kinds of liabilities, so they tend to adopt a “better safe than sorry” (or “CYA”) approach to issuing new regulations. The proliferation of regulations over time conveys a sense of imminent danger even when there is little or no real threat. In this way, administrators model multiple cognitive distortions, promote the Untruth of Fragility, and contribute to the culture of safetyism.

  Some of the regulations promulgated by administrators restrict freedom of speech, often with highly subjective definitions of key concepts. These rules contribute to an attitude on campus that chills speech, in part by suggesting that freedom of speech can or should be restricted because of some students’ emotional discomfort. This teaches catastrophizing and mind reading (am
ong other cognitive distortions) and promotes the Untruth of Emotional Reasoning.

  One recent administrative innovation is the creation of “Bias Response Lines” and “Bias Response Teams,” which make it easy for members of a campus community to report one another anonymously for “bias.” This “feel something, say something” approach is likely to erode trust within a community. It may also make professors less willing to try innovative or provocative teaching methods; they, too, may develop a CYA approach.

  More generally, efforts to protect students by creating bureaucratic means of resolving problems and conflicts can have the unintended consequence of fostering moral dependence, which may reduce students’ ability to resolve conflicts independently both during and after college.

  CHAPTER 11

  The Quest for Justice

  Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought.

  JOHN RAWLS, A Theory of Justice1

  Here’s a quirk about American politics: the majority of white Americans vote for Republicans for president, unless they were born after 1981 or between 1950 and 1954. Why those who were born after 1981 vote differently is easy to understand. They are Millennials or iGen; they lean left on most social issues and many economic ones (as Bernie Sanders discovered). They are less religious than previous generations, and the Republican Party turns them off in a variety of ways. But what’s the story for those born from 1950 to 1954? They strongly favored Democrats through the 1980s and have been roughly evenly divided since then, with a slight lean overall toward the Democrats. (You can see this for yourself, and play with one of the best interactive political infographics ever, by searching the internet for “How Birth Year Influences Political Views.”2)

  Why is there a little demographic island of Democrats among white Americans born in the early 1950s? Why do they vote differently in the twenty-first century than their siblings who were born a few years before or after them in the middle of the twentieth century?

  The answer might be 1968. Or, rather, the period of emotionally intense national political events of 1968 and the years around it (roughly 1965–1972).3 The political scientists Yair Ghitza and Andrew Gelman examined voting patterns of Americans to see whether political events or the political climate in childhood left some kind of mark on people’s later political orientation.4 They found that there is a window of higher impressionability running from about age fourteen to twenty-four, with its peak right around age eighteen. Political events—or perhaps the overall zeitgeist as people perceive it—are more likely to “stick” during that period than outside that age range.

  For Americans born in the early 1950s, all you have to do to evoke visceral flashbacks to 1968 is say things like: MLK, RFK, Black Panthers, Tet offensive, My Lai, Chicago Democratic National Convention, Richard Nixon. If those words don’t flood you with feelings, then do an internet search for “Chuck Braverman 1968.” The five-minute video montage5 will leave you speechless. Just imagine what it must have been like to be a young adult developing a political identity, perhaps newly arrived on a college campus, as momentous moral struggles, tragedies, and victories happened all around you.

  We are in another such era today, and if Ghitza and Gelman are correct, then the events and the political climate of the last few years may influence the way today’s college students vote for the rest of their lives. Suppose you were born in 1995, the first year of iGen. You entered your politically most impressionable period when you turned fourteen, in 2009, just as Barack Obama was being sworn in. You got your first iPhone a year or two later as smartphones became common among teenagers. If you went to college, you probably arrived on campus in 2013, the year you turned eighteen. What were the political events that you and your new friends were talking about, posting about, and protesting about? What were the issues on which you had to stake out your position with your tweets, posts, and “likes”? The government shutdown of October 2013? The long rise of the stock market?

  Not likely. The interests and activism of teens have far more to do with social issues and injustices than with purely economic or political concerns, and the 2010s have been extraordinarily rich in such issues. The table below shows a small sampling of the major news stories related to what is commonly known as “social justice” in each year since the first members of iGen turned fourteen. In 2009 and 2010, some of the largest news stories in the United States were the ongoing financial crisis, health care reform, and the rise of the Tea Party. You can see that high-profile social justice stories become more numerous in subsequent years, just as the first members of iGen were preparing to go off to college.

  YEAR

  MAJOR NEWS STORIES RELATED TO SOCIAL JUSTICE

  2009

  Inauguration of Barack Obama

  2010

  Tyler Clementi suicide (raises awareness of bullying of LGBT youth)

  2011

  Occupy Wall Street (raises awareness of income inequality)

  2012

  Killing of Trayvon Martin; reelection of Barack Obama; Sandy Hook elementary school massacre (raises interest in gun control)

  2013

  George Zimmerman acquitted of murder in the death of Trayvon Martin; Black Lives Matter founded

  2014

  Police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; police killing of Eric Garner in New York City (with video); Black Lives Matter protests spread across America; lead in drinking water in Flint, Michigan, raises awareness of “environmental justice”

  2015

  Supreme Court legalizes gay marriage; Caitlyn Jenner publicly identifies as a woman; white supremacist Dylann Roof massacres nine black worshipers in Charleston, South Carolina; Confederate flags removed from state capitol in South Carolina; police killing of Walter Scott (with video); universities erupt in protest over racism, beginning at Missouri and Yale, then spreading to dozens of others

  2016

  Terrorist Omar Mateen kills forty-nine in attack on gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida; police killing of Alton Sterling (with video); police killing of Philando Castile (with video); killing of five police officers in Dallas; quarterback Colin Kaepernick refuses to stand for national anthem; North Carolina requires transgender people to use bathrooms corresponding to the sex on their birth certificates; protest against Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock Indian Reservation; nomination and election of Donald Trump

  2017

  Trump inauguration; Trump attempts to enact various “Muslim bans”; women’s march in Washington; violent protests against campus speakers at UC Berkeley and Middlebury; Trump bans transgender people from military service; Trump praises “very fine people” in Charlottesville march, during which a neo-Nazi kills Heather Heyer and injures others by driving a car into a crowd; fifty-eight killed in largest mass shooting in U.S. history in Las Vegas; start of the #MeToo movement, to expose and stop sexual harassment and assault

  2018

  (through March)

  Nikolas Cruz, expelled student with history of emotional and behavioral disorders, kills seventeen at high school in Parkland, Florida; students organize school walkouts and marches for gun control across the United States

  Important, terrifying, thrilling, and shocking events happen every year, but the years from 2012 through 2018 seem like the closest we’ve come to the intensity of the stretch from 1968 to 1972. And if you are not convinced that the last few years are extraordinary by objective measures, then just add in the amplifying power of social media
. Not since the Vietnam War and the civil rights struggles of the 1960s have so many Americans been exposed to a seemingly endless stream of videos showing innocent people—mostly people of color—being beaten, killed, or deported by armed representatives of the state. Today’s college students have lived through extraordinary times, and, as a result, many of them have developed an extraordinary passion for social justice. That passion, which drives some of the changes we are seeing on college campuses in recent years, is our sixth explanatory thread.

  This chapter is about social justice. We will explore the meaning of this term and embrace one version of it while criticizing another. The term is a lightning rod in the left-right culture war, so this is a good time for us to lay our cards on the table, politically speaking: Greg identifies as a liberal with some sympathy for libertarian perspectives. Before FIRE, he worked for an environmental justice group; he worked for an organization that advocates for refugee rights and protections in Central Europe; and he interned at the ACLU of Northern California. Jon considers himself a centrist who sides with the Democratic Party on the great majority of issues, but who has learned a lot from the writings of conservative intellectuals, from Edmund Burke through Thomas Sowell. Neither of us has ever voted for a Republican for Congress or the presidency. Both of us share most of the desired ends of social justice activism, including full racial equality, an end to sexual harassment and assault, comprehensive gun control, and responsible stewardship of the environment. We both believe that the way social justice is currently being conceptualized and pursued on campus is causing a variety of problems and engendering resistance and resentment for reasons that some of its advocates don’t seem to recognize. In this chapter, we describe some of these conceptualizations. We also suggest a way to think about social justice that makes it more likely to be achieved and that harmonizes it with the traditional purpose of the university: the pursuit of truth.