Underdeveloped young adults who have been thrust into a world they are unable to understand or navigate

Noah Rothman writes about The Revolt of the Coddled at Commentary:

Prospective campus speakers like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Christina Hoff Sommers, and Condoleezza Rice, are perfect examples of this phenomenon. These women of stature who fail to comport to the stereotype of victimization to which women and minorities are, in the progressive mind, supposed to conform were disinvited from their respective speaking engagements following a revolt of the coddled. It wasn’t enough for those students to retreat to the Orwellian-named “safe spaces” that shield oversize children from discomfort. No, these aspiring totalitarians had to ensure that no one else could be exposed to these speakers’ ideas or the example that they as role models set.

Even Hillary Clinton says,

that alleged rape victims have “the right to be believed,” which asks Americans to subordinate constitutionalism and the prosecutorial process to emotionalism and mob rule.

Yes, that is the Hillary Clinton who organized campaigns against Kathleen Willey, Juanita Broadrick and many other women who say Bill Clinton either raped them or sexually assaulted them.

Far from being the pursuits of the enlightened, this manner of popular justice is a rejection of intellectualism. It is also, however, something simpler than that. It is a display of rage from underdeveloped young adults who have been thrust into a world they are unable to understand or navigate. One hapless Yale University student who had the misfortune of being featured in a viral video late last week best expressed this unlovely if not understandable sentiment.

At issue was a controversy over the school failing to regulate students’ Halloween costumes, which were said by some to be culturally insensitive. In response to an email from a student group requesting redress, the associate master of one of Yale’s undergraduate communities instead told their students to confront the offending costume-wearer and relate their concerns. For this, the incensed students demanded this college official’s job. In a video that exploded online, one of the students was filmed confronting American sociologist and physicist Nicholas Christakis. Displaying all the emotional maturity of a toddler, this student howled in indignation at the professor who found himself surrounded by a threatening number of overgrown children, all raging against the dying of their youths.

…The crisis on American campuses has never been better elucidated. It’s not about cultural sensitivity; it’s about ensuring that college students are spared challenges, and it is about the transference of power. This might be dismissed as a sad but isolated phenomenon if the professionally aggrieved students on American college campuses were simply dismissed. Instead, they routinely prove their clout.

Read more here.