To the OP, haven't read the thread.
The article was both thought-provoking and alarming. At one point, I stopped and thought "Brandeis?!", so I looked up its history, and sure enough, things have radically changed. The universities in the article, are not places I would expect to be using censorship.
I think this quote from the article sums things up:
[bold is mine]
There’s a saying common in education circles: Don’t teach students what to think; teach them how to think. The idea goes back at least as far as Socrates. Today, what we call the Socratic method is a way of teaching that fosters critical thinking, in part by encouraging students to question their own unexamined beliefs, as well as the received wisdom of those around them. Such questioning sometimes leads to discomfort, and even to anger, on the way to understanding.
But vindictive protectiveness teaches students to think in a very different way. It prepares them poorly for professional life, which often demands intellectual engagement with people and ideas one might find uncongenial or wrong. The harm may be more immediate, too. A campus culture devoted to policing speech and punishing speakers is likely to engender patterns of thought that are surprisingly similar to those long identified by cognitive behavioral therapists as causes of depression and anxiety. The new protectiveness may be teaching students to think pathologically.
Indeed.As for the term, regressive left (which I did not see in the article, but have researched already, and know from whence it came, I don't see that referenced in the OP, but it was coined to partly define the people who express anti-Muslim sentiment, which I find rather odd; it's not just the 'left' that embraces it, but I digress), I could see there being a fringe (reminds me of the "Tea Party") element that embraces these dangerous ways of thinking (or should I say, NOT thinking). I feel it is important to realize that some of the (briefly heard, in relative terms) loudest nutjobs, are bloggers, authors (often opportunistic columnists) who are cashing in, or religious people, who get exposure because their message is founded in some logic, then embellished and twisted, and at first, it seems to "have a point". People get sucked in. Time goes by, and the crazy really starts to show ... that's when the mainstream wakes up and says yikes, there are more of these people than we realized.
Prominent mainstream liberal thinkers like Naomi Wolf, for example, would never endorse this school of thought.
When I see an article in The Atlantic, I pay attention. It has journalistic integrity in this poster's opinion. It's good that educators are aware, and that it's being exposed NOW. A good read, and very informative, thanks Cofty, and Oub.
