By Garrick Hoffman

Liberal Arts Major

The cover story of the The Atlantic magazine’s September issue of this year, titled “The

Coddling of the American Mind,” has garnered a considerable amount of attention. One cause

for all its attention is how potent with truth it is. Another is that it could quite easily be perceived

as controversial or even offensive. To the surprise of the main author, Greg Lukianoff, very little

hatemail toward him was generated, his inbox instead being flooded with positive responses.

And thankfully so, because it’s an indication that many people acknowledge what corrupts us

today – especially within the borders of our schools.

The article broaches many topics that are interrelated and that, as Lukianoff argues,

plague us within the classroom and beyond: trigger warnings, microaggressions,

hypersensitivity, and what this author dubs as logophobia – the fear of words. It also asks a

question that encompasses all the material it covers: “What are we doing to our students if we

encourage them to develop extra-thin skin just before they leave the cocoon of adult

protection?” The fixation on these things (microaggressions, hypersensitivity, etc.) coalesce into

a toxic recipe for the Millennial generation and our future, even though professors and

administrators of the Baby Boomer generation themselves are guilty of perpetuating these. So

what are these things, and why are they so perilous to academia and to the mental well-being of

many?

As the author describes, trigger warnings are “alerts that professors are expected to

issue if something in a course might cause a strong emotional response.” Microaggressions are

“small actions or word choices that seem on their face to have no malicious intent but that are

thought of as a kind of violence nonetheless.” Hypersensitivity and logophobia are self-

explanatory, but when applying it to our culture, they refer to the knee-jerk reaction committed

by so many people to feel offended or disturbed by what are really innocent trivialities. However,

by describing someone as hypersensitive, there are people who will condemn you and label you

as insensitive, and – perhaps worse – as a bigot.

A variety of comedians – some of which are fairly or even very liberal, such as Bill Maher

and Chris Rock – have stopped performing at colleges altogether because students, rather than

finding humor, are instead rubbed the wrong way. Professors have been suspended and even

subjected to lengthy investigations on grounds of utterly preposterous allegations from students.

Many of them actively avoid teaching the “wrong” – yet significant – material, out of fear of being

charged with some false nonsense that could threaten their reputation and career.

Students will plead for completely unreasonable modifications in curricula. Just one

example included a request for Harvard professors to not teach rape law, and “in one case,

even use the word violate (as in “that violates the law”) lest it cause students distress,” as the

article describes. Indeed, the very students who accuse professors of microaggressions are

oftentimes the ones are the perpetrators of aggressive behavior, and will seek retributive

measures to punish those who don’t abide by their twisted moral code.

In psychology, professionals will employ various techniques such as “flooding” to

mitigate their patients’ phobias by exposing them to their fears. But in our word-sensitive culture,

we aim to circumvent word choices and shield people from “emotional damage” instead of

cultivating an emotional resolve (via “exposure,” if you will). Psychologists don’t admonish

protecting those with phobias from their fears; they seek to ameliorate their conditions by

exposing them – a technique that should probably be implemented virtually omnipresently.

And although there is indeed a presence of insensitivity and an absence of empathy in our

culture (the sort of Trump-esque “Just get over it” drivel, for example), the hypersensitivity is

possibly just as if not more damaging to our psyches than we really believe, and it oftentimes

goes unexamined.

Essentially, in this over-the-top politically correct culture of ours, students of the

Millennial generation are crusading to sanitize language in order to protect those whom needn’t

be protected. And school administrators are actually abiding by these inane requests. This

means modifying school curricula at the costs of the students, circumventing specific words and

employing euphemisms, and even restricting and censoring what we really mean to say, which

effectively abolishes classroom discussion and debate as if this will erase trauma and distress.

The point of all of this is to preserve people’s fragile emotional states by shielding them from

offensive and hurtful things, which, counter to what many of these students believe, in turn just

cultivates logophobia and actually maintains psychological disorders like anxiety. As one

responder to the article remarks, “The more people are taught that it is natural and healthy to

avoid things that might scare them, but present no real threat of physical harm, the more people

become divorced from the natural processes by which we have learned to understand and cope

with fear.”

Maybe it’s time that universities reconsider succumbing to these students out of fear of

retaliation. And maybe it’s time these overzealous PC monsters do some extensive

examination, introspection, and re-evaluation, instead of being so quick to charge people with

completely erroneous accusations.

God forbid they come across something offensive.