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

by Jonathan Haidt

A culture that allows the concept of “safety” to creep so far that it equates emotional discomfort with physical danger is a culture that encourages people to systematically protect one another from the very experiences embedded in daily life that they need in order to become strong and healthy.

principle of charity, which says that one should interpret other people’s statements in their best, most reasonable form, not in the worst or most offensive way possible.

It’s as though some of the students had their own mental prototype, a schema with two boxes to fill: victim and oppressor. Everyone is placed into one box or the other.

Bergesen notes that there are three features common to most political witch hunts: they arise very quickly, they involve charges of crimes against the collective, and the offenses that lead to charges are often trivial or fabricated.

The loss of political diversity among professors, particularly in fields that deal with politicized content, can undermine the quality and rigor of scholarly research.

when a field lacks political diversity, researchers tend to congregate around questions and research methods that generally confirm their shared narrative, while ignoring questions and methods that don’t offer such support.

Second, the loss of viewpoint diversity among the faculty means that what students learn about politically controversial topics will often be “left shifted” from the truth.

viewpoint diversity is necessary for the development of critical thinking, while viewpoint homogeneity (whether on the left or the right) leaves a community vulnerable to groupthink and orthodoxy.