Greg Lukianoff

As Marcus Aurelius advised, ‘Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.’ The more ways your identity can be threatened by casual daily interactions, the more valuable it will be to cultivate the Stoic (and Buddhist, and CBT) ability to not be emotionally reactive, to not let others control your mind and your cortisol levels.

Teach children the basics of CBT. CBT stands for ‘cognitive behavioral therapy,’ but in many ways it’s really just ‘cognitive behavioral techniques,’ because the intellectual habits it teaches are good for everyone.

If you see yourself or your fellow students as candles, you’ll want to make your campus a wind-free zone. ... But young adults are not flickering candle flames. They are antifragile.

Some of the parents may think that making sure their children do whatever it takes to succeed in advanced courses helps their children develop ‘grit.’ But ‘grit is often misunderstood as perseverance without passion,’ and that’s tragic,’ psychology professor Angela Duckworth, author of the book Grit, told us. ‘Perseverance without passion is mere drudgery.’ She wants people to ‘devote themselves to pursuits that are intrinsically fulfilling.’

When we overportect children, we harm them. Children are naturally antifragile, so overprotection makes them weaker and less resilient later on.

Aristotle often evaluated a thing with respect to its ‘telos’—its purpose, end, or goal. The telos of a knife is to cut. A knife that does not cut well is not a good knife. The telos of a physician is health or healing. A physician who cannot heal is not a good physician. What is the telos of a university? The most obvious answer is ‘truth.’

We agree with former Northwestern University professor Alice Dreger, who urges activist students and professors to ‘Carpe datum’ (‘Seize the data’). In her book Galileo’s Middle Finger, she contends that good scholarship must ‘put the search for the truth first and the quest for social justice second.’

A culture that allows the concept of ‘safety’ to creep so far that it equates emotional discomfort with physical danger is a culture that encourages people to systemically protect one another from the very experiences embedded in daily life that they need in order to become strong and healthy.

But discomfort is not danger. Students, professors, and administrators should understand the concept of antifragility and keep in mind Hanna Holborn Gray’s principle: ‘Education should not be intended to make people feel comfortable; it is meant to make them think.’