LAUSR

U.S. society has become ideologically divided to the point of seemingly no return. The division looks most palpable on the polarizing television news outlets, but it seems to be everywhere. Increasingly, one of the placeswhere discontent and division are most visible and militant is college campuses. Division appears even in places such as residency training programs; I remember one recent residency class being deeply and irreconcilably divided over political issues. This phenomenon is disquieting for many who have been used to debates and discussions rather than fights, harsh arguments, and dismissals. As educators, we have to ask ourselves how did we get here, what can we do to overcome this divide, and how can we help our trainees to learn to think and to be able to debate and discuss issues they disagree about in a civil, tolerant way. Greg Lukianoff, an expert on the First Amendment, and Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist and expert in cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), became puzzled by their observation that on some college campuses, words are increasingly seen as dangerous. Students have been asking for “triggering” material to be removed from courses, certain kinds of speech have been labeled as interfering with students’ ability to function, and the “heckler’s veto” (i.e., heckling so loud that an invited speaker cannot present) has been used increasingly. They also noted, “What is new today is the premise that students are fragile. Even those who are not fragile themselves often believe that others are in danger and therefore need protection” (p. 7). Lukianoff concluded, “Students...unwittingly learned to employ the very cognitive distortions that CBT tries to correct. Stated simply: Many university students are learning to think in distorted ways, and this increases their likelihood of becoming fragile, anxious, and easily hurt” (p. 9). Lukianoff and Haidt suggested previously that students engage in thinking commonly seen in people suffering from anxiety and depression and that students “react to words, books, and visiting speakers with fear and anger because they had been taught to exaggerate danger, use dichotomous (or binary) thinking, amplify their first emotional responses, and engage in a number of other cognitive distortions” (p. 10). To address these and other issues, they wrote this book, because they believe that these problems are temporary and fixable. The book has four parts: (I) Three Bad Ideas, (II) Bad Ideas in Action, (III) How Did We Get Here? and (IV) Wising Up. The book also includes two appendices: How to Do CBT and the Chicago Statement of Principles of Free Expression. Part I sets the stage and addresses the basic premise of this book, which is a challenge to three “Great Untruths” (p. 14):