The Coddling of the American Mind (2018)
Greg Lukianoff (1974) and Jonathan Haidt (1963)
338 pages
What to make of the dramatic rise in the number and intensity of protests on college campuses these past few years? The distinguishing feature in these recent demonstrations has been the focus by the students involved on shutting down or condemning speech deemed to be in some way harmful, whether it appeared in comments made by members of the campus community, or in the presentations of visiting speakers.
Although the past few decades have certainly seen occasional attempts to block or disinvite speakers, and the mid-to-late sixties were filled with campus protests that turned violent over political and social policy concerns, the current attempts by students to proscribe unwelcome speech, and the violent protests they have precipitated to do so, appear to be a new phenomenon.
In their engaging and thought-provoking work The Coddling of the American Mind, authors Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt claim that the sudden onset of these kinds of disruptions in the last four or five years is not actually surprising. Building on ideas they first presented in an August 2015 article with the same title in The Atlantic, they directly link the recent changes in behavior on college campuses to the experiences these students had growing up as part of the “iGen” generation (or “Generation Z”) that followed Millennials, that is, children born starting in 1995. They argue that changes in technology, in social conditions, and, critically, in how parents have raised and educators have engaged with this generation have led to a cohort of college students primed to usher in the dramatic events now being seen on campus.
The authors present their case systematically, dividing their presentation into four groups of chapters. In the first section they describe what they refer to as the Three Bad Ideas, beliefs that they argue have been inculcated into the iGen generation, leaving them particularly sensitive and reactive to speech that they find threatening. The second section of chapters examines in detail several examples of the resulting unrest and violence on college campuses, which the authors view as an outgrowth of the internalization of these bad ideas. In the third section they explore six social developments that they feel have led to the indoctrination of the iGen generation with the three bad ideas. They conclude in the final section by suggesting changes to how children are raised, and how students are treated on college campuses, approaches that they feel could help reverse the present troubling trends.
The opening section identifies and describes the Three Bad Ideas , or untruths, that Lukianoff and Haidt feel have led today’s college students astray. The first of these, The Untruth of Fragility they illustrate by giving an inverted sense to an old adage: “What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.” They argue that children today are being raised in an over-protective environment, and that this parental and now even legal hyper-concern for children’s safety prevents them from developing the strength to later face the world on their own.
The authors claim that this focus on safety in fact undermines the reality that children are “anti-fragile” --- not simply not-fragile, or resilient, but actually requiring, like our immune systems, “stressors and challenges in order to learn, adapt and grow.” (23) Depriving children of such experiences leaves them fragile, emotionally unable to cope with even the slightest bit of controversy over, or challenge to, their beliefs, views and expectations about the world.
The second bad idea, The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning, they describe as the belief that how one feels about an event or situation provides a valid understanding of what has occurred. For someone condition to accept this belief, the feeling that an aggression has occurred means that by definition it has. The tendency becomes to view any sort of unwelcome behavior or statement in the worst possible light, defining even accidental and unintentional offenses as aggressions. This leads ultimately to the concept of so-called micro-aggressions, a view that apparently no miss-statement is too minor to be condemned.
The last of the three bad ideas, The Untruth of Us Versus Them, arises out of humankind’s deeply engrained instinct for tribalism, and Lukianoff and Haidt view it as manifested in the practice of identity politics. In particular, the pair distinguish between two kinds of identity politics that arise out of this way of thinking. One they refer to as common-humanity identity politics, such as practiced by Martin Luther King, which attempts to motivate improvements for an oppressed or downtrodden group by appealing to a shared, or common humanity.
The other, which the authors find dangerously divisive, is what they refer to as common-enemy identity politics. They describe this as an approach that tends to unite a group by defining those in the group as good, and all those outside the group as the enemy. The result is an us-versus-them mentality that amplifies the impact of the first two untruths by creating groups of people who feel they have been offended and so the victims of aggression, and within which the three bad ideas become reinforced and so strengthened.
The author’s fundamental claim, then, is that the children of the iGen generation have been raised to internalize and believe bad ideas, and as a result have come to view the world through the lens of these untruths. This, they argue, has led to a generation that finds itself easily offended, trusts in their emotional response to words or actions as the arbiter of whether they should feel offended, and perceives anyone they feel has offended them, intentionally or otherwise, as the enemy. That their resulting reactions can become violent should hardly come as a surprise.
And in fact, in the second section, the authors demonstrate how the arrival of the iGen on college campuses in 2013 --- and their growing presence as the Millennials graduated out --- coincided with an increased intolerance of dissenting opinions, which has in turn led to a substantial weakening of the once fundamental standard of academic freedom to debate ideas. Many among this new generation of students, argue the authors, value feeling safe and unchallenged over such concepts as freedom of speech and open discussion. At the same time, the aggressive and sometimes violent reactions of students ingrained with these bad ideas creates an environment that can make the rest of the student body, as well as campus administrators, fearful to even speak up: how can they not become worried that what they say might offend someone, might therefore be perceived as an aggression, and so result in them being ostracized and even attacked?
By exploring several recent examples of uprisings that have occurred on college campuses, Lukianoff and Haidt examine the impact that students raised to believe in the three bad ideas have had. The examples they present include both events internal to a campus, as well as events triggered by the invitation or arrival of an outside speaker onto campus. By going into the details of these situations, the authors are able to point out how the run up to them, the disruption and violence that occurred as they evolved, and their complicated aftermath, exhibit the disastrous implications of youth raised and trained on the identified untruths.
As disturbing as these examples are, and as necessary as analysis of them is to help the authors make their larger point, I found this section of the book the most challenging. If one has heard about these particular incidents in the past, it was most likely a few hyperventilating media reports (or worse, tweet barrages) that mostly highlighted them for their most salacious moments; unless one probed more deeply, the specific details and complexity remained unclear. And so the unavoidable reality is that for such situations it can be easy to take any individual comment or action out of context, especially when trying to make a larger point.
As an example, take the following paragraph toward the end of the authors’ examination of events at Evergreen College in 2017: A student illustrated the Untruth of Emotional Reasoning (always trust your feelings) at the large town-hall meeting when she used her own anxiety as evidence that something was very wrong at Evergreen: “I want to cry, I can’t tell you how fast my heart is beating. I am shaking in my boots.” (119) Without going back and studying the larger context of this student’s statement, a reader could perhaps more simply ascribe this particular student’s comments to a natural fear of addressing a large gathering, as opposed to tying them to some deeper anxiety about the college atmosphere that led to the protests in the first place.
My point is not that the authors, who presumably watched the larger coverage of that particular meeting, didn’t get this right; it’s that events like these are deeply complex, and so resist any kind of brief analysis, even the extended one offered here. Thus, although I’m sympathetic to the authors’ thesis, and agree that their arguments seem to be reflected and substantiated by the campus events as they described them, I’m nonetheless somewhat wary of their specific conclusions regarding what happened during these events. That said, the violence and aggressiveness exhibited by the protestors can certainly not easily be excused, whatever the details of the circumstances, given it was a reaction to speech and ideas that can hardly be described as calls to hate or violence.
In this same vein, however, one laudable aspect of the book is the evident intent of the authors to represent some of this complexity, referring throughout the book to the broader social and political situations that have contributed to the phenomena they describe. They acknowledge the controversial nature of their thesis, and the reality that groups of people have concrete reasons for feeling aggrieved by social and political realities. In the Acknowledgements at the end of the book, they discuss the variety of sources from whom hey solicited feedback to help them bring balance to their arguments:
[our reviewers included] five readers who viewed campus events very differently from the way we did …. We also thank … readers who gave us detailed and very valuable comments on the entire manuscript, critiquing it from the left … [others] critiquing it from the right … and [several] critiquing it from an unidentified location. (272)Based on my reading, they so seem to have incorporated into the presentation of their ideas the valuable feedback they received, making the book feel more balanced, and so fairly argued, throughout.
Having described the three bad ideas they feel have become integral to the thinking of the iGen, and implicated that generation’s belief in these untruths in events on college campuses, the authors explore in the third section their understanding of How Did We Get Here, focusing in particular on six areas.
They begin with a cause that grows out of a broader trend in American society, one that will be clear to anyone paying even cursory attention to the news: the increasing political polarization that has occurred over the past decades. This evolution has been described by numerous authors, but one example would be Ole R. Holsti, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Duke University, who discussed the growth of this polarization in his book Making American Foreign Policy. Though he focused on American’s views about foreign policy, his analysis over many years of polling data reveals that in the wake of the disputes over the war in Vietnam, an alignment grew between Americans’ views on domestic and international policy --- an alignment that had not existed previously, and that, once in place, led to the development of divergent and highly partisan viewpoints about policy strategy and directions. (My review of Holsti’s book linked to at right.)
Lukianoff and Haidt argue that this growing partisan divide evolved into what they refer to as an emotional polarization, in which partisans on each side viewed those of the other side as evil, the enemy. Coupled with a shift to the left of university students and faculty, this led to more attacks on universities from conservative organization and media, which in turn created a kind of bunker mentality on campus, engendering and then reinforcing an “us versus them” outlook.
This sensation of being under attack has morphed, however, from pushing back through speech against these attacks from the right, to the recent violent reactions to what seem in some cases to be differences of opinion or even simply misinterpretation of intent. The explanation behind this reaction is tied by the authors to the remaining five areas they cover, all related to the formative lessons of the iGen generation.
For example, Lukianoff and Haidt examine studies that they say show an increase in anxiety and depression among members of the iGen, tied by some researchers to that generation’s exposure to social media and smart phones, which effectively multiply the frequency and impact of negative comments and perceptions.
Next they discuss what they refer to as paranoid parenting, in which parents --- with the best of intentions the authors admit --- stunt their children’s development into competent adults able to function in the rough-and-tumble real-world by protecting them from any experience with danger. In particular, they highlight the decline in play, lamenting that children no longer tend to go off and play alone with other children, an activity that forces them to learn how to get along without recourse to an adult to negotiate solutions to issues that arise. They acknowledge that this problem has broader social origins, as in some states or municipalities it has actually become a crime for even older children to be left on their own.
The result for children raised in these conditions --- anxious and depressed from the buffeting blows of social media exposure, inexperienced at confronting challenges on their own, and unable to negotiate issues without a higher authority present to arbitrate --- has been the arrival on campus of students who are fragile and hyper-sensitive. These students have subsequently driven changes in college and university bureaucracies that the authors identify as a further area of concern, a bureaucracy of safetyism, as administrations at various institutions of higher education have backed down before these students, catering to their sensitivities.
Effectively it has transformed some campuses into environments in which all the hard edges are padded, by trigger warnings, for example, or overly broad rules to limit speech that might even simply be perceived as hurtful or biased. Through measures such as these, administrators not only continue forward the pattern of overly protecting students as fragile, and so not training them to be anti-fragile, but also tear down one of the foundations of a university setting --- the free and open debate of ideas that is so core to scholarship and learning.
The final area the authors discuss is what they refer to as the quest for justice. They argue that we have shifted away from what they define as proportional-procedural social justice, which “aim[s] to remove barriers to equality of opportunity and also to ensure that everyone is treated with dignity.” (231) In its place has arisen a desire for what they refer to as equal-outcomes social justice, an attempt to put in place regulations that enforce equality of outcomes. Enforcing such equal outcomes, however, runs counter to people’s innate sense of fairness, and so creates conflict between groups who don’t feel that all are given equal opportunity to benefit.
Together the issues that Lukianoff and Haidt identify implicate the broader social situation in the United States, the manner in which children are raised, and the environment on college campuses that these children encounter when they come of age. Having established the causes for recent student behavior, in the final section of the book the authors make suggestions for how to back away from the “coddling of the American mind” that they feel has led to it.
Some of these suggestions are difficult simply because they involved revoking or limiting privileges that have now become standard for so many children, such as, for example, restricting access time to electronic devices and social media. Others are difficult because they require a willingness to allow children to experience the risk of failure, and, more critically, some level of physical danger.
Thus, for example, the recommendation to allow children significant unstructured playtime --- that is, without adult supervision --- as was common up until just a few decades ago. Such experiences force children to negotiate with one another, without recourse to an adult to mediate, supporting a fundamental idea mentioned several times in the book, the need to: “Prepare the Child for the Road, Not the Road for the Child.” The authors are fair enough to acknowledge the risks associated with such approaches to childrearing, and that it can be difficult for parents to take on these risks, for both protective reasons, as well as given existing laws in many places. (One mother's story, here.)
For universities, the authors’ recommendations revolve around returning to a situation of fostering free expression and dialogue, as opposed to trying to box it in to make campuses a safe space. More generally, they stress the importance of fostering a sense of a broad community on campus, as opposed to segregated identities, and not teaching students lessons that effectively reinforce the three great untruths: fragility, emotional reasoning, and viewing life as a battle between us and them.
Lukianoff and Haidt conclude their analysis with a mixture of despair and a bit of hope. On the one hand, they lament that:
America’s rising political polarization and rising rates of adolescent depression, anxiety, and suicide... are serious, and [they] see no sign that either trend will be reversing in the next decade. (264)At the same time, they note that there has begun to be recognition of the issues they raise, and they list approaches being taken by some groups of parents as well as some college administrations to address them. They describe these as isolated steps so far, but offer them as potential beginnings of a movement back from the harmful ‘coddling’ of children’s’ minds that they feel has become the norm in the last couple of decades.
As the authors themselves point out, their thesis and conclusions touch directly on sensitive and controversial topics, likely to generate significant pushback from the very members of the iGen who they would argue exhibit the corrosive fruits of belief in the three bad ideas. While acknowledging that certain groups of people suffer the impacts of very real discrimination and violence, and that such social and political realities must be forcefully addressed, they nonetheless argue that a generation has been raised with beliefs that lead too many of them to draw the boundaries of unacceptable speech so broadly that conversation is shutdown, stifling the opportunity to even discuss and debate critical issues and potential solutions. Worse yet, the aggressive and sometimes violent reactions that occur create a positive feedback loop, reinforcing the very polarization that has contributed to the growth of these problems.
In The Coddling of the American Mind, Lukianoff and Haidt present a forceful and balanced examination of what has created this new environment, of its impacts on free speech and debate, and of ways to walk back from the edge of what they see as a dangerous precipice, and so again make it possible to have the conversations necessary to make progress on so many challenging issues.
Other reviews / information:
A convenient feature of the book is that the authors include a short summary at the end of each chapter of the main ideas discussed. This helps going back to quickly refresh their earlier arguments as one works through the book.
In the epigraph to Chapter 5, Witch Hunts, the authors making an interesting connection of the modern day aggression and violence on campus over speech to the work of Eric Hoffer from 1951, entitled The True Believer. In that book, Hoffer examines “some peculiarities common to all mass movements” (xi, Hoffer), including the importance of hatred of the other as a means of riling up a crowd. (My review of Hoffer’s book linked to at right.)
At an event at the Institute of Politics, commentator and author Van Jones gave a powerful condemnation of what he calls the “terrible idea” that safe spaces on campus should mean that:
“I need to be safe ideologically, I need to be safe emotionally, I just need to feel good all the time, and if someone says something that I don’t like, that’s a problem for everybody else, including the administration.”
He goes on to say:
“And I think that that is a terrible idea, for the following reason: I don’t want you to be safe, ideologically; I don’t want you to be safe, emotionally; I want you to be strong; that’s different. I’m not going to pave the jungle for you; put on some boots and learn how to deal with adversity.”
A link to his full comments at left. Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf
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