Jonathan Haidt on the Cultural Roots of Campus Rage
An unorthodox professor explains the ‘new religion’ that drives the intolerance and violence at places like Middlebury and Berkeley. By BARI WEISS Updated March 31, 2017 7:27 p.m. ET Wall Street Journal 505 COMMENTS New York When a mob at Vermont’s Middlebury College shut down a speech by social scientist Charles Murray a few weeks ago, most of us saw it as another instance of campus illiberalism. Jonathan Haidt saw something more—a ritual carried out by adherents of what he calls a “new religion,” an auto-da-fé against a heretic for a violation of orthodoxy. “The great majority of college students want to learn. They’re perfectly reasonable, and they’re uncomfortable with a lot of what’s going on,” Mr. Haidt, a psychologist and professor of ethical leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business, tells me during a recent visit to his office. “But on each campus there are some true believers who have reoriented their lives around the fight again...