The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

by Jonathan Haidt

Shadi Hamid, a scholar at The Brookings Institution, describes his approach to dealing with potential microaggressions in an article in The Atlantic: “As an Arab and a Muslim, I get the questions ‘Where are you from?’—by which people usually mean ‘Where are you really from?’—and ‘Were you born here?’ quite often. It doesn’t usually occur to me to get offended.”16 As Hamid notes, “In our identitarian age, the bar for offense has been lowered considerably, which makes democratic debate more difficult—citizens are more likely to withhold their true opinions if they fear being labeled as bigoted or insensitive.” Hamid’s point has important implications for the challenge of building a community on a college campus, where we want students to freely engage with one another rather than keeping their thoughts hidden. Imagine that you are in charge of new-student orientation at an American university that is very diverse—there are students from a wide variety of racial groups, ethnic groups, religions, and socioeconomic backgrounds. There are international students from Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America, some of whom don’t speak English well; many don’t understand the nuances of English words and American customs, and as a result, they often choose the wrong word to express themselves. There are also students on the autism spectrum who have difficulty picking up on subtle social cues.17 With all this diversity, there will be hundreds of misunderstandings on your campus each day.