The Coddling of the American Mind

[Saunders]

Something strange is happening at America’s 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 law—or, 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 paranoia—and was then subjected to a long investigation after students who were offended by the article and by a tweet she’d 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. “I’m 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 Flanagan’s article in this month’s issue). Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher have publicly condemned the oversensitivity of college students, saying too many of them can’t take a joke.

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/

 

 

[Landlord]

The internet is making the age we're living in very strange and sensitive indeed.

 

People simultaneously:

 

1. have access to way more information than ever before and more than they would ever know what to do with

 

2. are encouraged to filter that information out to where the only thing reaching them is stuff that they already agree with

 

3. have the constantly lingering threat of the social media mob either frightening them into speaking what is truly on their mind, or condemning them in the public eye for whatever imperfections come out.

 

 

 

Social media is simultaneously one of the most amazing things and one of the most absolutely terrifying things I have ever seen. It gives everyone a voice and a platform, when in reality not everyone should ever have one, but it encourages a mindset that I'm important and that the world I live in can and should be catered to my preferences. I don't think as a culture that we're prepared and ready to deal with the power that it has in a healthy and responsible manner, and the solution is essentially to just shut up.

[BigRedBuster]

I firmly understand being sensitive to other people's feelings. I try my best to not offend people in my actions or words. BUT, somewhere it gets to the point that some people are going to be offended no matter what you do or say and I refuse to get all worked up about it. Instead of going through life concentrating on yourself and making your place in life better for you and people around you, some people constantly look outward and actually go looking for things that offend them.

 

I choose to keep those people out of my life as much as possible. Problem is, I think there are more and more people that are like that due to internet and social media. On line, they are able to find more people like them that are offended by certain things so it instills in them even more that it's OK to get all worked up about something and be offended.

 

Common phrase from childhood that more people should actually think about.

 

 

"Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never harm me"

[Street Novelist]

I'm surprised a liberal magazine wrote this article, considering the ones complaining about being offended are almost always liberals/progressives. If I didn't know better, I would have thought this was coming from a conservative publication. At least liberals are finally starting to acknowledge there's a problem with being politically correct; and it's now restricting how teachers do their job.