jonathan haidt the coddling of the american mind

Inside Higher Ed covered it, but that probably doesn’t count as a major outlet. It’s encouraging news, but, as of this writing, I have found no major mainstream print outlet that covered the study as news. In other words, young women who aspire to work in the academic sciences can be reasonably sure they’ll be paid fairly. What accounts for the remaining disparity?Įven this 4% unexplained gender salary gap may be due to factors such as career discontinuities, less-aggressive salary negotiations, gender differences in seeking competing offers, and grant awards-and, importantly, may also be due to women’s lower overall productivity-rather than to overt gender bias. A gap remained, but it was smaller-just under 4 percent. Too often gender pay watchers fail to account for potentially confounding factors, factors that are often driven by choices workers make-like which fields to pursue or how many hours to work.Īfter accounting for various potential confounders, the authors' apples-to-apples analysis didn’t find an 18 percent salary gap. “What is new today is the premise that students are fragile,” write Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt in “The Coddling of the American Mind.” “Even those who are not fragile themselves often believe that others are in danger and therefore need protection.” The debate narrows as everyone censors others as well as themselves.The authors note that “it is common to read that women earn only 82 cents for every dollar that men earn.”ĭisparities often look worse when you compare apples to oranges. Members of what psychologist Jean Twenge calls “iGen” (born after 1995) moved from challenging controversial speakers to hounding even very liberal members of their own communities who wrote or said something that was deemed offensive. They lobbied for “safe spaces” where they could avoid being exposed to uncomfortable ideas. Some demanded that anything “triggering” be removed entirely from the curriculum so that no one might feel traumatized.

Students began demanding “trigger warnings” for certain material in their classes. But something changed about five years ago. For most of the past few decades, college students have been proponents of free speech, despite occasional bouts of protest and indignation.

Jonathan haidt the coddling of the american mind