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For over a generation, shocking cases of censorship at America’s colleges and universities have taught students the wrong lessons about living in a free society. Drawing on a decade of experience battling for freedom of speech on campus, First Amendment lawyer Greg Lukianoff reveals how higher education fails to teach students to become critical thinkers: by stifling open debate, our campuses are supercharging ideological divisions, promoting groupthink, and encouraging an unscholarly certainty about complex issues. Lukianoff walks readers through the life of a modern-day college student, from orientation to the end of freshman year. Through this lens, he describes startling violations of ...
'Excellent, their advice is sound . . . liberal parents, in particular, should read it' Financial Times The New York Times bestseller What doesn't kill you makes you weaker Always trust your feelings Life is a battle between good people and evil people These three Great Untruths contradict basic psychological principles about well-being, as well as ancient wisdom from many cultures. And yet they have become increasingly woven into education, culminating in a stifling culture of "safetyism" that began on American college campuses and is spreading throughout academic institutions in the English-speaking world. In this book, free speech campaigner Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt investigate six trends that caused the spread of these untruths, from the decline of unsupervised play to the corporatization of universities and the rise of new ideas about identity and justice. Lukianoff and Haidt argue that well-intended but misguided attempts to protect young people can hamper their development, with devastating consequences for them, for the educational system and for democracy itself.
The Rise of Victimhood Culture offers a framework for understanding recent moral conflicts at U.S. universities, which have bled into society at large. These are not the familiar clashes between liberals and conservatives or the religious and the secular: instead, they are clashes between a new moral culture—victimhood culture—and a more traditional culture of dignity. Even as students increasingly demand trigger warnings and “safe spaces,” many young people are quick to police the words and deeds of others, who in turn claim that political correctness has run amok. Interestingly, members of both camps often consider themselves victims of the other. In tracking the rise of victimhood culture, Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning help to decode an often dizzying cultural milieu, from campus riots over conservative speakers and debates around free speech to the election of Donald Trump.
Are your kids being indoctrinated in school? Unfortunately, it’s increasingly likely. From “social justice” to critical race theory, and from advocacy and activism campaigns to planned “action weeks,” teachers and schools nationwide are abandoning neutrality in the classroom, embracing political agendas and partisan aims, and expecting students to get on board. Meanwhile, students with doubts or misgivings decline to voice objections due to fears of lowered grades, impacted college recommendation letters, social ostracism, “cancellation,” public shaming, ridicule, and other formal and informal means of “correcting” them and making them toe the ideological line. Is this what...
The classic “compelling defense of free speech against its new enemies” now in an expanded edition with a foreword by George F. Will (Kirkus Reviews). “A liberal society stands on the proposition that we should all take seriously the idea that we might be wrong. This means we must place no one, including ourselves, beyond the reach of criticism; it means that we must allow people to err, even where the error offends and upsets, as it often will.” So writes Jonathan Rauch in Kindly Inquisitors, which has challenged readers for decades with its provocative analysis of attempts to limit free speech. In it, Rauch makes a persuasive argument for the value of “liberal science” and the ...
2021 Choice Outstanding Academic Title In this timely and provocative book, Damon Root reveals how Frederick Douglass’s fight for an antislavery Constitution helped to shape the course of American history in the nineteenth century and beyond. At a time when the principles of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence were under assault, Frederick Douglass picked up their banner, championing inalienable rights for all, regardless of race. When Americans were killing each other on the battlefield, Douglass fought for a cause greater than the mere preservation of the Union. “No war but an Abolition war,” he maintained. “No peace but an Abolition peace.” In the aftermath of the C...
America is embroiled in ideological conflict, with the opposing partisan bulwarks of the Left and the Right widening a chasm that threatens the unity of our Republic. The tumult in Washington has radiated into our universities, homes, and relationships — from constitutional threats; to the imposition on free speech; to a sprawling, unelected administrative state, America is at a tipping point. Fortunately, Encounter’s Broadside and Intelligence series offer indispensable ammunition for intelligent debate on these critical issues of our time. With a staunch allegiance to the truth, these timely essays resurrect 18th-century pamphleteering to take on everything from the failures of the red...
A timely, provocative, necessary look at how identity politics has come to dominate college campuses and higher education in America at the expense of a more essential commitment to equality. Thirty years after the culture wars, identity politics is now the norm on college campuses-and it hasn't been an unalloyed good for our education system or the country. Though the civil rights movement, feminism, and gay pride led to profoundly positive social changes, William Egginton argues that our culture's increasingly narrow focus on individual rights puts us in a dangerous place. The goal of our education system, and particularly the liberal arts, was originally to strengthen community; but the e...
A fascinating examination of how restricting speech has continuously shaped our culture, and how censorship is used as a tool to prop up authorities and maintain class and gender disparities Through compelling narrative, historian Eric Berkowitz reveals how drastically censorship has shaped our modern society. More than just a history of censorship, Dangerous Ideas illuminates the power of restricting speech; how it has defined states, ideas, and culture; and (despite how each of us would like to believe otherwise) how it is something we all participate in. This engaging cultural history of censorship and thought suppression throughout the ages takes readers from the first Chinese emperor’s wholesale elimination of books, to Henry VIII’s decree of death for anyone who “imagined” his demise, and on to the attack on Charlie Hebdo and the volatile politics surrounding censorship of social media. Highlighting the base impulses driving many famous acts of suppression, Berkowitz demonstrates the fragility of power and how every individual can act as both the suppressor and the suppressed.
The academy is in crisis. Students call for speakers to be banned, books to be slapped with trigger warnings and university to be a Safe Space, free of offensive words or upsetting ideas. But as tempting as it is to write off intolerant students as a generational blip, or a science experiment gone wrong, they’ve been getting their ideas from somewhere. Bringing together leading journalists, academics and agitators from the US and UK, Unsafe Space is a wake-up call. From the war on lad culture to the clampdown on climate sceptics, we need to resist all attempts to curtail free speech on campus. But society also needs to take a long, hard look at itself. Our inability to stick up for our founding, liberal values, to insist that the free exchange of ideas should always be a risky business, has eroded free speech from within.