College campuses are becoming increasingly sensitive to what are being called microaggressions and emotional triggers. At Harvard, there’s been a push in its law department not to teach rape law or so much as use the word violate, including in sentences such as, “He violated the law,” for fear students might be traumatized. Students have pushed for the banishment of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby from study because of the misogyny it allegedly portrays. Many comedians have stopped performing on college campuses, because in this hypersensitive climate, it can be difficult to joke about anything. This summer, a professor—writing under a pseudonym—wrote an article for Vox titled, “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me.”

“There’s a saying common in education circles: Don’t teach students what to think; teach them how to think,” write Gret Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt for The Atlantic. “Today, what we call the Socratic method is a way of teaching that fosters critical thinking, in part by encouraging students to question their own unexamined beliefs, as well as the received wisdom of those around them. Such questioning sometimes leads to discomfort, and even to anger, on the way to understanding. But vindictive protectiveness teaches students to think in a very different way. It prepares them poorly for professional life, which often demands intellectual engagement with people and ideas one might find uncongenial or wrong. The harm may be more immediate, too. A campus culture devoted to policing speech and punishing speakers is likely to engender patterns of thought that are surprisingly similar to those long identified by cognitive behavioral therapists as causes of depression and anxiety. The new protectiveness may be teaching students to think pathologically.” (The Atlantic)