My Review* of Greg Lukianoff's and Rikki Schlott's "The Cancelling of the American Mind:..."

The New Totalitarians

 

Greg Lukianoff’s and Rikki Schlott’s new book on the totalitarian nature of America’s cancel culture couldn’t be timelier. I would like to state at the outset that freedom of speech is very important to me because in my misspent youth I put myself at great risk for my beliefs.

 

As I write this, we are witnessing a rampage of totalitarian racial Marxists assaulting Jews on our most elite college campuses. It is not an accident that both Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania, schools that witnessed among the worst antisemitic rampages in recent days, scored the lowest on the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) scores on campus freedom of speech.  Just to note, Lukianoff is the president of FIRE and Schlott is a research fellow there.

 

This book can be considered a continuation of Jonathan Haidt’s and Greg Lukianoff’s 2018 “The Coddling of the American Mind.” Here Lukianoff and Schlott go into example after example of how people are canceled because of their heterodox beliefs. Most of the examples take place on college campuses, but there are telling examples in the publishing and the corporate world. Most of the examples involve the Left on attack with their rhetorical fortress built around the racial Marxist belief that oppressors can do no right and the oppressed can do no wrong. Thus, under their canon Israel defending itself from a wanton terrorist attack is guilty, while the Hamas terrorist dictatorship is innocent. Although Lukianoff considers himself a man of the Left, it fits neatly into Christopher Rufo’s right wing world view as expressed in his “America’s Cultural Revolution.” ( Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Christopher Rufo's "America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything")

 

This book is not only a screed attacking the Left. The Right doesn’t get off easy as well. The authors recount how anti-Trump conservatives were cancelled, books were banned and “anti-woke” laws were put in place in several states forcing professors to walk on eggshells in what they can say on and off campus.

 

Lukianoff’s and Schlott’s solution calls for the creation of a free speech culture on college campuses, easier said than done, eliminating DEI loyalty oaths in the hiring and promotion of faculty, opening up more jobs to non-college graduates, and calling for employers to widen their horizons with respect to schools they recruit at. (i.e., more state schools over the Ivy’s) Indeed Lukianoff himself had to do away with the college degree requirement to hire Schlott.

 

I would go much further. In my view donors that feel the way I do should cut off their contributions to their alma maters, the entire DEI bureaucracy which enforces the cancel culture should be torn up root and branch and government should withhold funding for those institutions who fail to do that.

 

P.S. I received this book as a gift.

*-Amazon has yet to post the review. 11/16.   Amazon rejected this review because of  a "violation of community standards." I slightly edited the review and it appeared on 12/4 at the following URL:  The New Totalitarians (amazon.com)

My Amazon Review of Greg Lukianoff's and Jonathan Haidt's "The Coddling of the American Mind....."

Spoiled Children go to Elite Universities

Free speech lawyer Greg Lukianoff and N.Y.U. professor of “Righteous Mind” fame Jonathan Haidt have written a very important book about what ails our elite universities and our society as a whole. The authors build on Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s work on the concept of antifragility. Put bluntly by overemphasizing safety we have raised a crop of very fragile middle-class children who find great difficulty in dealing with life in the real world. These kids have become oh so sensitive to anything they perceive as a slight and that sensitivity is exacerbated by the all-encompassing presence of social media.

Haidt and Lukianoff note the three great untruths of our age:

1.     What doesn’t kill us makes us weaker.

2.     Always trust your feelings

3.     Life is a battle between good and evil.

There is no subtlety here and this gives rise to a collegiate culture that is hostile to ideas and words that are outside of the mainstream. Although there is a great push for diversity by race, gender, and sexual orientation there is strong opposition to any notion of diversity of thought. Hence conservative speakers are subject to a heckler’s veto across most of America’s campuses. This situation is amplified by faculties that are overwhelmingly liberal.

The authors recount the all too many instances where conservative speakers were disinvited, shouted down, or precipitated a riot. However I would note that where there were significant disturbances at the University of Missouri and Evergreen State College freshman enrollment is way down.

The safety culture starts at a young age. Parents keep peanuts away from children out of fear of a potential allergy. In fact by doing this it makes peanut allergies far worse. Better to expose children to peanuts when they are young and they will build up a resistance to the allergy. Hence the concept of making kids antifragile.

Similarly the authors applaud the concept of “free range kids.” Kids should be free to explore their neighborhoods and play together without parental supervision. This teaches them how to work things out among themselves rather than seek out authority figures. Children looking to outside authority will become adults who do the same thereby impairing our democracy.

So what is to be done? The authors   recommend that colleges endorse the Chicago Principles on free speech and urge parents to limit their children’s use of social media. They also call for less homework in the early grades and less structure in the life of teenagers to give time for free play. The authors know that this goes against the grain of every hyper-competitive parent. Lastly they encourage college students to take a gap year to give them time to grow up in the real world.

I haven’t done justice to the book. It should be read by parents, college professor and administrators and citizens concerned about the future of our country. Although the book is too long the message is too important.

The full Amazon URL appears at: https://www.amazon.com/review/R1G8DL3Q5N4MZ7/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv