The Coddling of the American Mind
Something strange is happening at Americas colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense. Last December, Jeannie Suk wrote in an online article for The New Yorker about law students asking her fellow professors at Harvard not to teach rape lawor, in one case, even use the word violate (as in that violates the law) lest it cause students distress. In February, Laura Kipnis, a professor at Northwestern University, wrote an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education describing a new campus politics of sexual paranoiaand was then subjected to a long investigation after students who were offended by the article and by a tweet shed sent filed Title IX complaints against her. In June, a professor protecting himself with a pseudonym wrote an essay for Vox describing how gingerly he now has to teach. Im a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me, the headline said. A number of popular comedians, including Chris Rock, have stopped performing on college campuses (see Caitlin Flanagans article in this months issue). Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher have publicly condemned the oversensitivity of college students, saying too many of them cant take a joke
