Speech On College Campuses: Lukianoff And Haidt

Lukianoff and Haidt provide examples of how students are trying to eliminate speech that may be found offensive or discomforting on campus in their article for The Atlantic. Two fairly recent terms to understanding this development in student ideology are “microaggression” and “trigger warning.” A microaggression is inadvertently insulting someone or a group of people with something that was not meant to be offensive. A trigger warning is a warning often provided to students when the subject matter of a class may be found offensive or elicit a strong emotional response. These two terms represent the change in ideology towards speech on campuses. The authors are amazed by the extreme actions of students that border on the surreal. In their

They provide examples from the University of California administrators, who in 2014 gave them a list of seemingly common phrases that must be avoided to prevent offending students. The authors point out that the political correctness movement of the 1980’s and 90’s is similar but different from what we are currently experiencing; the current movement is driven by emotional well-being rather than protecting marginalized groups. Believing to have the freedom to not be offended is not a new concept, for example, people fought for the right to be offensive all the way back in the Victorian era. Starting in the 80’s, far left students on college campuses decided that women and minorities had the right to not be offended. The authors uses the term “vindictive protectiveness” to describe the brutal response by the current movement towards people who question whether or not the movement actually keeps students safe. Lukianoff and Haidt agree that these developments are dangerous for American universities and claim they could write a whole other article outlining that

Lukianoff and Haidt provide the definition of “catastrophizing” as “a kind of magnification that turns ‘commonplace negative events into nightmarish monsters.” The authors then cite events where even faculty overreacted to simple things, such as jokes. They conclude that anyone is capable of overreacting and having emotional responses. The final type of cognitive distortion, “mental filtering,” is defined as, “Picking out a negative detail in any situation and dwelling on it exclusively thus perceiving that the whole situation is negative” (Burns). The Authors argue that 2014’s disinvitation season is a perfect example of this distortion. Students/faculty making brash decisions to disinvite speakers because of one thing from the speaker’s past is mental filtering. For a person to be allowed to speak on campus, they must be considered pure by the students and staff, or at least from their background