As I was reading Noah Berlatsky's
review of
The Coddling of the American Mind I found myself asking "What does that have to do with anything?" to many of his criticisms. It's not that his arguments against the book were bad, but rather that they appeared to be mostly non-responsive, in some cases obviously so. Which seems like an interesting enough phenomenon that it merits discussion.
Berlatsky discusses four people in particular: Charles Murray, Erika Christiakis, Laura Kipnis, and Robert Zimmer. However, even fully accepting his characterization of people and events, there's not a whole lot of
there there:
Murry: Berlatsky is on firmest ground in this instance, saying that Haidt and Lukianoff are "soft-pedaling" Murry's history of racist writing. He writes
But is protest itself wrong in this case?
That's not what Haidt/Lukianoff are getting at at all; there's no reason to assume that they've any complaint with the students protesting Charles Murray. Rather, the Murray section of the book is primarily a discussion of the "heckler's veto" e.g. sustained disruption which prevents someone from speaking at all. They think that it's happening more often, and is increasingly tolerated by administrators. But Berlatsky doesn't address this; the closest he comes is saying
In the melee as student protesters demonstrated against Murray, one student pulled the hair of the professor who was supposed to interview Murray, giving the professor a concussion. Whether that incident is an example of student excessive fearfulness is perhaps an open question. But it's certainly ugly.
Ok, great, we're in agreement: it's ugly. But whence springs the ugliness, if not excessive fearfulness? And is that sort of disruption to be tolerated? Berlatsky doesn't say.
I said above that he's on "firmest ground" with this example. An argument has been made, by multiple parties at this late date, that some speakers are so damaging that they should not be allowed to speak at all. I'd expect Berlatsky to embrace this argument and then show that Murray falls within it's scope. But he doesn't do that, just leaves the reader with the following thought
How can the authors assess whether protest is justified if they don't accurately explain what's at stake?
Which, really, just misses the point entirely, doesn't it?
Christiakis: You think the discussion of Murry was bad? Here's the entirety of what Berlatsky has to say regarding Erika Christiakis:
Similarly, Lukianoff and Haidt applaud Christakis' argument that students shouldn't be asked to be racially sensitive when choosing Halloween costumes. They do not quote from a thoughtful and generous letter from 2015 by Yale student Ryan Wilson taking the contrary position.
Let's, for the sake of argument, grant that Erika Christiakis was totally off-base in sending that email. Taking that as given, how is it the least bit reasonable that students ended up screaming at her
husband? That's the focus of that particular section of
Coddling, responses by students (and administrators) which seem disproportionate to the inciting incident. Berlatsky doesn't just gloss over that issue; he doesn't mention it at all.
Kipnis: Berlatsky spends several paragraphs on Kipnis; go read them for full flavor. Here's what I took to be the crux of his criticism:
But in making her out to be the wronged party, they similarly dismiss concerns among students about professors' sometimes-predatory behavior.
It would help if he quoted them actually being dismissive, because that's not what I took away from the authors' discussion of Kipnis.
Rather, their focus was on the fact that a professor was subjected to
two Title IX investigations for
writing about why she disagreed with Title IX. The first stemmed from an article which met the publication standards of the frickin'
Chronicle of Higher Education, while the second arose when she published a book that recounted her
first investigation. One can simultaneously be concerned about predatory behavior by professors and the chilling effects of over-broad interpretations of Title IX; there's nothing logically inconsistent about that.
In this case you can (sort of) follow Berlatsky's reasoning by reading between the lines:
Kipnis was eventually cleared of wrongdoing, and her investigation has made her a free-speech cause for many on the right and center-right.
I think the subtext of the above is that, in labeling "free-speech" as a "right and center-right" concern, he's dismissing it as a legitimate grievance, which would explain why he doesn't engage with the authors' argument. Though this is significantly undermined by the fact that Berlatksy identifies Haidt and Lukianoff as being on the "center left" elsewhere in the article, and both authors are clearly quite concerned about free speech issues as they relate to Kipnis.
Zimmer: Lastly, there's the discussion about Zimmer, which is what prompted me to write this article. He gets way more column inches than seems merited, given that I think he's only quote in passing in
Coddling. There's a long digression on students and staff trying to get a trauma center at the University of Chicago and Zimmer's response in one instance:
At one point, nine protesters, including one student, occupied the University of Chicago hospital demanding to speak with Zimmer. Instead of engaging in a free-spirited, open debate, Zimmer ducked the meeting, and the protesters were arrested.
Berlatsky takes this as evidence that Zimmer is not in favor of "open discourse and free debate". Declining to engage with protesters who are occupying a building is not at all equivalent to curtailing someone else's speech.
Anyway, all of the above is preamble to the actual question: What's going on here? While you might quibble with Berlatsky's representation of any single figure, taken as a whole it seems obvious, to me at least, that the article is a collection of missed points and non-sequiters. Condensing Berlatsky's main points significantly (again, go read the whole article):
- Charles Murray is an unredeemed racist. The authors need to make this clear so that readers will understand that protesting him was totally appropriate.
- Erika Christiakis was wrong; here's a student's counter-argument.
- Kipnis' behavior undermined Title IX protections. Students who bring Title IX prosecutions are "brave".
- Zimmer isn't a free-speech supporter. Instead, "he was a reactionary foot-dragger, refusing to hold discussions or acknowledge community needs until direct action and a rolling public relations disaster forced his hand".
I think maybe the answer can be found in the conclusion to Berlatsky's article:
Haidt and Lukianoff, though, consistently see the less powerful as a real danger, while framing protest against powerful institutions as childish caterwauling. The result is that they end up telling students that the only way they can truly be brave and adventurous is by obeying authority and doing what they're told.
Which, ironically, is a highly dualistic view of a book that spends a lot of time trying to break down various dualisms.
A dualistic world view, as a theory for this behavior, has a lot of explanatory power. Spitballing here:
- The people that the authors discuss (Murry, Christiakis, and Kipnis, at least) are morally flawed figures, therefore bad things that happened to them are either merited or can be disregarded.
- Either the students are righteous or they're "childish".
- The alternative to unfettered protest is to obey authority and do what you're told.
I mean, really, that's about how Berlatsky sums it up; this is all about the powerless protesting the powerful. Reading his conclusion you'd think that Haidt and Lukianoff told the students to sit down and shut up. Hell, the authors aren't really even interested in protest,
per se, but rather in understanding the factors that lead to things like
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IEFD_JVYd0 and maybe suggesting that it would be better if people don't do that. Which is a pretty far cry from the picture which Berlatsky paints.
