Safety versus Freedom

Does Our Cultural Obsession With Safety Spell the Downfall of Democracy?

By Thomas Chatterton Williams, NYT,  Aug. 27, 201

THE SPLINTERING OF THE AMERICAN MIND
Identity Politics, Inequality, and Community on Today’s College Campuses
By William Egginton
263 pp. Bloomsbury. $28.

THE CODDLING OF THE AMERICAN MIND
How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure
By Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt
338 pp. Penguin Press. $28.

In this review Thomas Chatterton Willliams frist refers to the so called "How-To"-affair of THE NATION and goes on to remark:

If it feels as though we no longer know how to speak or listen in good faith to one another, it’s because we don’t. This is the kind of controversy that might have seemed overblown as recently as the start of the Obama administration. Today it arrives with frequency and fervor — a marker of the country’s rapidly shifting mores, which are the product of new generations increasingly fluent in, in thrall to and in fear of the hyperspecialized language and norms of academia. Whether you even find the above exchange intelligible reveals a great deal more than merely your political bent, touching on aspects of age, education and geography — not to mention distinctions of race and class.

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Auf deutsch siehe Artikel von Haimo L. Handl: Sprachpolizei