Interview: Greg Lukianoff on “The Coddling of the American Mind”

“On campuses so far, I have been pleasantly surprised that I have been invited to talks that have been well-received and civil.”

Greg Lukianoff is the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), an organization that seeks to promote First Amendment rights of American college students and faculty members. He co-authored the 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure with Dr. Jonathan Haidt. Mr. Lukianoff is also the author of Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate, which examines the state of public discourse on college campuses. He joins Erich Prince and Merion West to discuss his experience collaborating with Dr. Haidt on the book, reactions to their work, as well as his upbringing and lessons that cognitive behavioral therapy might shed on campus political debates.

Mr. Lukianoff, thank you for speaking with us today. In your book, you and Dr. Haidt talk about sitting down in Greenwich Village to discuss your plans for undertaking this project. You have written other books in the past; however, what is the main difference writing when you have a co-author? How does this process differ from books one writes on his own?

Writing with a co-author is risky, especially if you are friends with the person. A lot of people have their egos tied up in the particular way they construct their prose. Something that was really helpful in writing with Haidt was understanding that he is a phenomenal writer and trusting in that. The way we ended up dividing it up was I took the lead on most the preliminary work, the structure, some of the ideas, and researching some of the major incidents. As we got to the end of the book, Jon added in a lot more about the science, data, and areas of his expertise from psychology to Emile Durkheim and really perfected the wording. All throughout, we got fantastic help from the staff at FIRE (The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), especially my chief researcher Pamela Paresky and my assistant Eli Feldman. We got careful, thoughtful help and feedback from dozens of people and we were so thankful that we even put the acknowledgments up online so even people who did not read the book could see them.