Analysis Of 'The Coddling Of The American Mind'

"Microaggressions are small actions or word choices that seem... to have no malicious intent but are though of as a kind of violence" (Lukianoff & Haidt 1). In "The Coddling of the American Mind" Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Hadit explains that these "microaggressions" are one of the many reasons modern colleges and universities encourage "trigger warnings" for students who may be easily offended, and are punished if they fail to do so. Lukianoff and Hadit feel sheltering young adults from offensive content fails to set them up for their adult lives and can cause the things they were trying to avoid such as depression or anxiety. The authors gave many strong examples to help their argument. However, this argument would have been stronger if

In telling the other view it would have established credibility with the reader, and maybe even strengthen their own argument by convincingly conflicting these opposing arguments. Instead, the closest instance is in an example about a protest at UCLA. A group of young individuals staged a sit in during a class taught by an education professor, Val Rust. These students wrote a letter "expressing their concerns about the campus's hostility towards people of color" (Lukianoff & Haidt 1). Though not named, the students implied Rust's teachings were "microagressive." One student mentioned that Rust corrected a capital I in "Indigenous" and changed it to "indigenous" and this "was an insult to the student and her ideology"(Lukianoff & Haidt 1). This is as close as the reader gets to any opposing views. However, the above is only an example of what offended a student rather than an argument against the author. In response to this, a reader may research the opposing argument which could turn the reader against the author if it's more convincing. The authors could have avoided this by inserting opposing views into their essay and even strengthened it in the