How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure.
Sponsored by the Institute for Humane Studies.
EVENT DESCRIPTION
Something has been going wrong on many college campuses in the last few years. Speakers are shouted down. Students and professors say they are walking on eggshells and are afraid to speak honestly. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are rising. How did this happen?
Eminent social psychologist Jonathan Haidt thinks the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into American childhood and education--ideas that are making it harder and harder for students to become autonomous adults who are able to navigate the bumpy road of life.
In this event, Haidt explained the many social trends that have intersected to promote the spread of these untruths; things like:
The rise of fearful parenting
The decline of unsupervised, child-directed play
The new world of social media that has engulfed teenagers in the last decade
The corporatization of universities
The emergence of new ideas about identity and justice
ABOUT JONATHAN HAIDT
Jonathan Haidt (pronounced “height”) is a social psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992, and taught for 16 years in the department of psychology at the University of Virginia
Haidt’s research examines the intuitive foundations of morality, and how morality varies across cultures––including the cultures of progressive, conservatives, and libertarians. His goal is to help people understand each other, live and work near each other, and even learn from each other despite their moral differences. Haidt has co-founded a variety of organizations and collaborations that apply moral and social psychology toward that end, including HeterodoxAcademy.org, OpenMindPlatform.org, and CivilPolitics.org.
Haidt is the author of The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, and of The New York Times bestsellers The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, and The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure (co-authored with Greg Lukianoff). In 2019 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was chosen by Prospect magazine as one of the world's "Top 50 Thinkers." He has given four TED talks.