Patterico's Pontifications

9/10/2018

Freshman Students (More Likely Their Parents) Recoil from the Coddling of the American Mind at Evergreen State College

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 6:42 pm



An atmosphere of moral panic has taken root at colleges across the country, as “social justice warriors” form roving mobs that surround and harass good people like Nicholas Christakis at Yale, or Bret Weinstein at Evergreen State College in Washington State. If you never saw the clip of Bret Weinstein trying to reason with a pack of SJWs, take a few minutes and watch it now:

The administration at ESC did not back up Weinstein at all, and he ended up leaving — a story typical of these types of encounters.

At Hot Air, John Sexton reports that enrollment at Evergreen State College is waaaaay down. Sexton quotes a professor who supported Weinstein (a lefty, but one I respect) as follows:

This fall, we expect less than 300 freshmen to attend Evergreen, a fifty percent drop from two years ago. It is the only four year institution in the state of Washington that has seen a decrease in applications, and is currently publicly funded for 4200 students, far greater than this year’s anticipated total attending class of 2800.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer group of folks.

One would like to think this will take place at other colleges where SJWs are out of control, but it seems unlikely. (Never say never!) Most of those colleges are among the most elite institutions in the country, and nothing is likely to change.

Unless it does.

The topic of the infantilization of the American college student (and, increasingly, college students in other English-speaking countries) is the topic of a new book that I began reading today: The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure (affiliate link). It is by Jonathan Haidt (Hi! I’m Jonathan Haidt! You may remember me from such books as The Righteous Mind!) and FIRE President Greg Lukianoff. Count on a review in the (probably near) future. So far it’s excellent.

My oldest goes off to college in just a couple of weeks. She has a strong mind and will resist this sort of nonsense. But young people like her are in short supply these days. Something has to change. At Evergreen State College, it looks like parents are demanding something better. Good for them.

[Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.]


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