25. Stripling, J. (2017, October 15). The lure of the lazy river. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Lure-of-the-Lazy-River/241434 [inactive]
26. Papish v. Bd. of Curators of the Univ. of Missouri et al., 410 U.S. 667 (1973) (reinstating a student expelled for distributing an underground student newspaper with an offensive cartoon and headline); Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989) (flag burning).
27. For simplicity, we’ll use the term “administrators” to include those who run the university, and all the deans and offices that have anything to do with student life. This includes much (but not all of) the professional staff on campus other than the faculty—generally the people students mean when they talk about “the administration” of a university.
28. Greg’s first book, Unlearning Liberty (Lukianoff 2014), covering campuses from around 2001 to 2012, presents dozens of examples of administrators overreacting.
29. After placing the professor on leave and forcing him to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, the college eventually rescinded its punishment. See: Victory: College backtracks after punishing professor for “Game of Thrones” picture. (2014, October 28). FIRE. Retrieved from https://www.thefire.org/victory-college-backtracks-punishing-professor-game-thrones-picture
30. College declares Haymarket Riot reference a violent threat to college president. (2015, June 8). FIRE. Retrieved from https://www.thefire.org/college-declares-haymarket-riot-reference-a-violent-threat-to-college-president. FIRE sent two letters to Oakton, but nothing further occurred in this case; the school didn’t retract its cease-and-desist letter, but no formal action was taken against the professor.
31. Harris, S. (2016, September 1). Speech code of the month: Drexel University. FIRE. Retrieved from https://www.thefire.org/speech-code-of-the-month-drexel-university
32. FIRE rates colleges’ speech codes as “red light,” “yellow light,” or “green light.” (FIRE’s speech code ratings are explained in full at https://www.thefire.org/spotlight/using-the-spotlight-database.) The University of West Alabama’s “red light” policies are still in effect, including the ban on harsh text messages or insults. Jacksonville State’s speech codes have changed over the years; most recently in 2017. It now has an overall yellow light rating. You can see which colleges are rated as red, yellow, or green at https://www.thefire.org/spotlight. See also: (n.d.). Spotlight: Jacksonville State University. Retrieved from https://www.thefire.org/schools/jacksonville-state-university. See also: (n.d.). Spotlight: University of West Alabama. Retrieved from https://www.thefire.org/schools/university-of-west-alabama
33. Harris, S. (2009, May 29). McNeese State revises “public forum” policy but still prohibits “derogatory” speech. FIRE. Retrieved from https://www.thefire.org/mcneese-state-revises-public-forum-policy-but-still-prohibits-derogatory-speech
34. Univ. of Cincinnati Chapter of Young Americans for Liberty v. Williams, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 80967 (S.D. Ohio June 12, 2012).
35. You can see a wide variety of campus codes at: Spotlight Database and Activism Portal. (2018). FIRE. Retrieved from https://www.thefire.org/spotlight
36. In the fifteen years between September 12, 2001, and December 31, 2016, there were eighty-five “violent extremist” attacks in the United States, an average of less than half a dozen per year. Valverde, M. (2017, August 16). A look at the data on domestic terrorism and who’s behind it. PolitiFact. Retrieved from http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/aug/16/look-data-domestic-terrorism-and-whos-behind-it
37. The webpage listed on the signs explains: “The New York University Bias Response Line provides a mechanism through which members of our community can share or report experiences and concerns of bias, discrimination, or harassing behavior that may occur within our community.” NYU Bias Response Line. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.nyu.edu/about/policies-guidelines-compliance/equal-opportunity/bias-response.html
38. FIRE. (2017). 2017 Report on Bias Reporting Systems. [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.thefire.org/first-amendment-library/special-collections/fire-guides/report-on-bias-reporting-systems-2017
39. See a review of such biases in Haidt (2006), chapter 2.
40. See Pappano, L. (2017, October 31). In a volatile climate on campus, professors teach on tenterhooks. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/31/education/edlife/liberal-teaching-amid-partisan-divide.html. See also: Belkin, D. (2017, February 27). College faculty’s new focus: Don’t offend. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/articles/college-facultys-new-focus-dont-offend-1488200404
41. Suk Gersen, J. (2014, December 15). The trouble with teaching rape law. The New Yorker. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trouble-teaching-rape-law
42. Steinbaugh, A. (2016, July 7). University of Northern Colorado defends, modifies “Bias Response Team” as criticism mounts and recording emerges. Retrieved from https://www.thefire.org/university-of-northern-colorado-bias-response-team-recording-emerges
43. Melchior, J.K. (2016, July 5). Exclusive: Transcript of bias response team conversation with censored professor. Heat Street (via Archive.org). Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20160805130848/https://heatst.com/culture-wars/exclusive-transcript-of-bias-response-team-conversation-with-censored-professor [inactive]
44. Note that this is very similar to the case of Lindsay Shepherd at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada. Shepherd showed a clip from a televised debate without condemning, in advance, one of the sides of the debate. It can be risky to stage a debate in class if any student feels strongly that one side is correct. See: Grinberg, R. (2017, November 23). Lindsay Shepherd and the potential for heterodoxy at Wilfrid Laurier University. Heterodox Academy. Retrieved from https://heterodoxacademy.org/lindsay-shepherd-and-the-potential-for-heterodoxy-at-wilfrid-laurier-university
45. As FIRE’s Adam Steinbaugh notes, “academic freedom chilled politely is still academic freedom chilled.” See: Steinbaugh, A. (2016, July 7); see note 2.
46. Or sometimes not well intended. Given the political dynamics of many campuses, which we described in chapters 4 and 5, bias response tools can easily be used in malicious ways. In the early days of these systems, in 2009, one of the students who worked on the Bias Response Team at California Polytechnic State University admitted in an interview that one target of the system would be the “teacher who isn’t politically correct or is hurtful in their actions or words.” In a case at John Carroll University, several students used the school’s bias response apparatus to target one student in what appeared to be a prank. See: Cal Poly suspends reporting on “politically incorrect” faculty and students. (2009, June 1). FIRE. Retrieved from https://www.thefire.org/cal-poly-suspends-reporting-on-politically-incorrect-faculty-and-students-2. See also: John Carroll University. (2015, December). Bias reports 2014–2015. Retrieved from http://webmedia.jcu.edu/diversity/files/2015/12/2014-2015-Bias-Report-web-version.pdf
47. 20 U.S.C. § 1681 et seq. (1972).
48. See Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, 526 U.S. 629, 633 (1999); Bryant v. Indep. Sch. Dist. No. I-38, 334 F.3d 928, 934 (10th Cir. 2003).
49. Civil Rights Act of 1964 § 7, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2 (a)(1) & (2) (1964) (prohibiting discrimination in hiring or workplace on the basis of “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin”); Education Amendments of 1972 § 9, 20 U.S.C. § 1681(a) (1972) (prohibiting discrimination in education “on the basis of sex”).
50. Student wins Facebook.com case at University of Central Florida. (2006, March 6). FIRE. Retrieved from https://www.thefire.org/student-wins-facebookcom-case-at-university-of-central-florida
51. Note that a school can and should use a very low threshold for making support or counseling services available for anyone who feels harassed. The bar for punishing speakers accused of saying something harassing should be higher. Under Title IX, fo
r example, a reported victim is entitled to ameliorative steps before, and even without, a determination of wrongdoing by the accused. The mistake, we believe, is to conflate the two, such that if one person feels offended by a one-off speech act, another person should generally be charged with harassment. A school that makes such a conflation is codifying and teaching the Untruth of Emotional Reasoning and encouraging moral dependence.
52. Janitor/student Keith John Sampson received a letter informing him that he had been found guilty of racial harassment for “openly reading the book related to a historically and racially abhorrent subject.” Lukianoff, G. (2008, May 2). Judging a book by its cover—literally. Retrieved from https://www.thefire.org/judging-a-book-by-its-cover-literally-3
53. For examples, see Gluckman, N., Read B., Mangan, K. & Qulantan, B. (2017, November 3). Sexual harassment and assault in higher ed: What’s happened since Weinstein. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from https://www.chronicle.com/article/Sexual-HarassmentAssault/241757; Anderson, M.D. (2017, October 19). How campus racism could affect black students’ college enrollment. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/10/how-racism-could-affect-black-students-college-enrollment/543360/; Berteaux, A. (2016, September 15). In the safe spaces on campus, no Jews allowed. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/09/15/in-the-safe-spaces-on-campus-no-jews-allowed/?utm_term=.2bb76389a248
54. Silverglate, H. A. (1999, January 26). Memorandum to free speech advocates, University of Wisconsin. Retrieved from https://www.thefire.org/memorandum-to-free-speech-advocates-university-of-wisconsin
55. Doe v. University of Michigan, 721 F.Supp. 852, 865 (E.D. Mich. 1989).
56. Corry v. Leland Stanford Junior University, No. 740309 (Cal. Super. Ct. Feb. 27, 1995) (slip op.).
57. Bhargava, A., & Jackson, G. (2013, May 9). Letter to President Royce Engstrom and University Counsel Lucy France, Esq., University of Montana. U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, & U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights. Retrieved from https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/legacy/2013/05/09/um-ltr-findings.pdf
58. Kipnis, L. (2015, February 27). Sexual paranoia strikes academe. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from https://www.chronicle.com/article/Sexual-Paranoia-Strikes/190351
59. During the investigation, Kipnis was told she could not involve a lawyer; she could not record her meetings with investigators; and, initially, she was told she would not even be informed of the charges against her until she attended the meetings. Cooke, R. (2017, April 2). Sexual paranoia on campus—and the professor at the eye of the storm. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/02/unwanted-advances-on-campus-us-university-professor-laura-kipnis-interview
60. Title IX Coordinating Committee response to online petition and ASG resolution. (2014, March 4). Northwestern Now. Retrieved from https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2014/03/title-ix-coordinating-committee-response-to-online-petition-and-asg-resolution
61. Suk Gersen, J. (2017, September 20). Laura Kipnis’s endless trial by Title IX. The New Yorker. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/laura-kipniss-endless-trial-by-title-ix
62. A defamation suit filed against Kipnis by a student continues. Meisel, H. (2018, March 7). HarperCollins can’t escape suit over prof’s assault book. Law360. Retrieved from https://www.law360.com/articles/1019571/harpercollins-can-t-escape-suit-over-prof-s-assault-book
63. FIRE (Producer). (2016, April 6). In her own words: Laura Kipnis’s “Title IX inquisition” at Northwestern [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/vVGOp0IffOQ?t=8m58s
64. Campbell & Manning (2014). See also their expansion of this work in Campbell & Manning (2018).
65. Campbell & Manning (2014), p. 695.
66. Campbell & Manning (2014), p. 697.
67. Read the email from Erika Christakis here: FIRE (2015, October 30). Email from Erika Christakis: “Dressing Yourselves,” email to Silliman College (Yale) students on Halloween costumes. FIRE. Retrieved from https://www.thefire.org/email-from-erika-christakis-dressing-yourselves-email-to-silliman-college-yale-students-on-halloween-costumes
Chapter 11: The Quest for Justice
1. Rawls (1971), p. 3. Rawls was one of the leading political philosophers of the twentieth century, famous for asking what kind of society we would design if we had to do it from behind a “veil of ignorance” as to what role we would occupy in the society.
2. Data from Ghitza & Gelman (2014) is made interactive in Cox, A. (2014, July 7). How birth year influences political views. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/08/upshot/how-the-year-you-were-born-influences-your-politics.html?_r=0
3. The year 1965 saw the passage of the Voting Rights Act, the Watts riot, the march on Selma, and an increase in protests of the Vietnam War as America’s involvement intensified; 1972 saw the reelection of Richard Nixon over the “peace candidate,” George McGovern, in a landslide—a crushing blow to many in the counterculture. Most Americans born in 1954 could vote in that election; nobody born in 1955 was eligible.
4. Ghitza & Gelman (2014). The paper uses presidential approval ratings as an easily available proxy for the political events occurring in each year—if the president is wildly popular during your late teens (and you’re white), you’re more likely to vote for that party for the rest of your life. But the authors acknowledge that a variety of “political shocks” are likely to have effects; for example, assassinations, riots, and so on. The model is more descriptive of white voters than it is of black or Hispanic voters.
5. Pyramid Film Producers (Producer). (1969). The World of ’68 [Video file]. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/worldof68
6. Sloane, Baillargeon, and Premack (2012) found that twenty-one-month-old infants looked longer at these violations of proportionality than at scenes where only the person who worked was rewarded. See review of the literature on the early emergence of fairness in Bloom (2014).
7. Damon (1979); Kanngiesser & Warneken (2012).
8. Almas, Cappelen, Sorensen, & Tungodden (2010).
9. Starmans, Sheskin, & Bloom (2017).
10. See Adams (1963); Adams (1965); Huseman, Hatfield & Miles (1987); Walster, Walster, & Berscheid (1978).
11. Walster, Walster, & Berscheid (1978).
12. Ross & Sicoly (1979). See Fiske (1992) for discussion of how concerns about equality and proportionality vary across relationships and contexts.
13. Adams & Rosenbaum (1962).
14. Lind & Tyler (1988). See also: Tyler & Blader (2014). See also: earlier work by Thibaut and Walker (1975).
15. Tyler & Huo (2002).
16. There is a line of research arguing that causality sometimes runs the other way: many people want to justify the status quo, and this desire motivates them to rationalize existing injustices. See this accessible and recent overview: Jost, J. T. (2017). A theory of system justification. American Psychological Association. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2017/06/system-justification.aspx
17. Hayek (1976); Nozick (1974).
18. This definition can no longer be found on the website of the National Association of Social Workers, but it was in use until at least August 11, 2017. It can be accessed at: NASW. (2017, August 11). Social justice [via web.archive.org]. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20170811231830/https://www.socialworkers.org/pressroom/features/issue/peace.asp [inactive]
19. Putnam (2015), pp. 31–32, notes that “if forced to choose, Americans at all income levels say by nearly three to one that it is ‘more important for this country . . . to ensure everyone has a fair chance of improving their economic standing [than] to reduce inequality in America.’” The survey questions he cites come from a survey conducted in 2011 by the Pew Economic Mobili
ty Project.
20. See research on System Justification Theory, for example, Jost, Banaji, & Nosek (2004).
21. See discussion in chapter 3, and see Crenshaw’s TED talk: TED (Producer). (2016, October). Kimberlé Crenshaw at TEDWomen 2016—The urgency of intersectionality [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/kimberle_crenshaw_the_urgency_of_intersectionality
22. Sometimes members of the minority group are motivated to deny these injustices as well; see research on System Justification Theory, for example, Jost, Banaji, & Nosek (2004).
23. Guinier (1994).
24. Bolick, C. (1993, April 30). Clinton’s quota queens. The Wall Street Journal.
25. Lewis, N. A. (1993, June 4). Clinton abandons his nominee for rights post amid opposition. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/1993/06/04/us/clinton-abandons-his-nominee-for-rights-post-amid-opposition.html
26. See U.S. Dept. of Education, Office for Civil Rights. (1979, December 11). A policy interpretation: Title IX and intercollegiate athletics. Retrieved from https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/t9interp.html
27. A 1993 federal appellate decision, Cohen v. Brown Univ., would foreshadow what became the official position of the Department of Education three years later. In Cohen, members of the women’s gymnastics and volleyball teams sued Brown after their teams were cut, allegedly for financial reasons. The court held that Brown had violated Title IX, because the percentage of varsity opportunities for women was lower than the percentage of female enrollment; that there was substantial unsatisfied interest from women to play sports; and that, to comply with Title IX, Brown must either fully accommodate the underrepresented sex or provide opportunities equal to the proportions in its enrollment. See: 991 F.2d 888, 899 (1st Cir. 1993). In other words, if the interest of the underrepresented sex cannot be fully accommodated, the overrepresented sex’s opportunities must be reduced until the proportions match.
28. Effectively all but five colleges in the country. For more on “Dear Colleague” letters, see: Admin. (2013, May 28). Frequently asked questions regarding the federal “blueprint” for sexual harassment policies on campus. FIRE. Retrieved from https://www.thefire.org/frequently-asked-questions-regarding-the-federal-blueprint-for-sexual-harassment-policies-on-campus/#whatisdcl
The Coddling of the American Mind Page 38