In their 2015 article “The Coddling of the American Mind,” Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt criticize the student-led movement to ban offending words and ideas from college campuses, arguing that doing so encourages harmful mental habits and denies intellectual freedom.
Lukianoff and Haidt define emotional reasoning as assuming one’s feelings accurately interprets reality. They explain how emotional reasoning has lowered “the bar for what [is considered] unacceptable speech” by allowing students to judge comments and course material solely on emotions rather than context (Lukianoff and Haidt). Furthermore, they explain that this way of thinking is detrimental to students’ mental health because it encourages them to be hypersensitive to anything