Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society

> and since you benefitted from it,

We're getting now to one of the bigger problems with the philosophy you're describing: What's "you" here? Is "you" people in the same genetic category as the people who benefited from redlining. Those who happen to look like these people, but share actual no genetic ancestry (say, because they were immigrants) or perhaps do not share the privilege (say, because they were born poor or had other disadvantages) might take exception. Push them too hard, you become the oppressor.

There's then a Kafkaesque attitude that manifests that says, "I don't care what your protestations are on this topic, nor will I hear your case, you belong to X [ where X is social group, economic class, identity group, race, or whatever ] and you should accept sacrifices for the great good. Full stop. If you deny it you're the enemy."

That's one reason why many people view highly "corrective" actions in the realm of social relations or economic re-organizations with a strong amount of terror. We certainly have strong examples of terror manifesting in the 20th century in completely separate parts of the world and at massive scale - always for the greater good.

The white suprematists found it more effective not to explicitly state their ideological goals.

There are plenty of academic legal societies very interested in “states’ rights”, “returning to the constitution”, “memorializing the Confederacy”, etc. I don’t see a important distinction between an explicit statement and dog-whistle so thinly veiled that everyone knows what it stands for.

> We have laws for separation of church and state, they should be applied to this as any other. This is a religion.

I'd say this about any sort of psychological theories that get intertwined into the justifications of power structures. The government should not be speculating about or creating rules about people's inner states. A government trying to change the minds of the population undermines democracy. An administration, fine, but not the government itself, with regulations paid for with tax money.

People should change governments. Governments shouldn't change people.

They also have an explicit expectation that most papers will "slightly to moderately advance[] SPSP's goal of promoting equity, inclusion, and anti-racism", as well as a header that separates the DEI review from the normal review. It's hard to imagine someone reading this policy and saying "well, my research is unrelated to equity or anti-racism, so I'll just say that and it'll be fine".

Whatever. Haidt should start a new professional sociology society that excludes class, caste, and wealth.

After the 2016 presidential, I binge read everything that might provide a clue to what just happened. Haidt was highly recommended. (Corporate media has a radical centricism fetish.) So I read all his words.

Not impressed.

This review of Haidt's Coddling of the American Mind [2018], by another professor, perfectly captures my own reaction to all the cancel culture boomers:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2520208235

This is a very narrow and small-minded book parading as a big thoughtful one. It says it is about the American Mind, but the data and the theory only support "the coddling" of a very narrow subset of the American mind: upper middle class college kids born after 1995 that got to college in 2013. As far as that group is concerned, this is really good advice. I totally agree with his three untruths--your feelings are not necessarily true, the world is not good and evil, and adversity does not make you weak. I also agree that children need lots of free play and that social media is bad for kids and they are over-protected. There is nothing to disagree with here (even though I sometimes chafe at "when we were kids..." arguments)

HOWEVER, using this group's specific problems, the authors make vast over-generalizations. The few anecdotes highlighted are meant to be examples of a deeper problem, but to me, they are the sum total of the problem. Left leaning students are behaving very badly toward conservative speakers. At most, there are 10 or so highly publicized events that seem to play on a loop among conservatives and intellectual dark web types. And there are no defenses to these behaviors, but it hardly represents our nation. And they provide no data whatsoever that it does. It's too soon to even tell that the next generation will be like this one.

And for people who seem to care a lot about both sides arguments, they seem to leave out a lot of counter-examples. Here are a few:

1. They talk about the metoo movement once in the beginning. Is that not a product of this "call out" generation? None of us "old" women had the "balls" to speak truth to power like these young women do. Good for them.

2. And the Parkland teens and all the ways in which this generation is more compassionate and engaged than we were. My generation (I'm 40) thought it was cool not to care about anything. My middle school kid stays up after school making protest signs and watching political debates. Is that not progress?

3. The authors also focuses on one particular subset of an entire generation (left-leaning, and mostly women and LGBT or Trans students asking for safe spaces). They leave out that Gamergate and the trolls and the alt right are also made up of this generation. Why not talk about them at all? Seriously. They are literally the same age and except for one aside in the entire book that "the right does it too" there are no examples at all of the right doing the thing they are decrying. It seemed like a half-assed "both sides" argument without support.

4. Do you know how many books I've read written by old people decrying the hippie generation of the 60s (Alan Bloome's Closing of the American Mind is an example)? Bloome was talking about Haidt and Luianoff. Boy do they grow up fast.

5. It makes me sad that more people will read this book than will read books highlighting actual big problems like inequality. The authors give a nod to the fact that inequality should definitely be remedied, but they would rather you do it the right way and not call it "social justice."

Again, I agree with all the parenting advice and the cognitive behavior advice, but this is not a self-help book. It's meant as a polemic and it strikes at the wrong target.