Collective monomania, “an exaggerated and unhealthy obsession with one thing,” is causing large groups of people to become illiberal and stupid, Writes social psychologist Jonathan Haidt on Persuasion.

By “illiberal” he means intolerant and indifferent to “individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise.”

Monomaniacs compete for prestige by expanding their one true idea to ever greater areas and competing to be the truest believer, he writes. When enemies are out of reach, they attack “innocent people who happen to be nearby.”

This dynamic may account for the cruelty with which power monomaniacs turn on professors and administrators who try to help them, or who otherwise share their political views but not their monomania. The threat of job loss and reputational damage make everyone else walk on eggshells . . .

Monomaniacs have trouble with nuance and complexity.

In a 2009 TEDx talk titled “Be suspicious of simple stories” the economist Tyler Cowen warned that stories impose a structure on events that distorts them and blinds us to the distortion. He was particularly concerned about moralistic stories that divide the world into good and evil. He proposed that “as a simple rule of thumb, just imagine that every time you’re telling a good versus evil story, you’re basically lowering your IQ by ten points or more.”

Activism used to be confined to certain departments in the university, Haidt Writes. Science and engineering were not affected until about 2015.

I have argued elsewhere that the collapse was brought about by changes to social media that began in 2009 and, by 2012, had created a universal outrage machine. This machine then dissolved the long-standing and essential walls around professions within which a sense of disciplinary standards and duties had, in prior decades and centuries, been formed and passed on.

Professors and academic leaders have a duty to free students from the grip of monomania, Haidt writes. “A liberal arts education should expand minds and prepare students for citizenship in a liberal democracy.”

Stand up to the mob, writes Dorian Abbot on Bari Weiss’ Substack site. A professor of geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago, Abbot was invited to give a prestigious science lecture at MIT. “MIT cancelled because of an outrage mob on Twitter,” he writes. “My crime? Arguing for academic evaluations based on academic merit.”

In the fall of 2020 . . .  I recorded some short YouTube videos in which I argued for the importance of treating each person as an individual worthy of dignity and respect. In an academic context, that means giving everyone a fair and equal opportunity when they apply for a position as well as allowing them to express their opinions openly, even if you disagree with them.

As a result, I was immediately targeted for cancellation, primarily by a group of graduate students in my department.

In response to a letter of denunciation, University of Chicago President Robert Zimmer issued a statement in support of faculty free expression.

Things were quiet until Abbot and a colleague criticized Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), as currently implemented on campus, in a Newsweek commentary on August 12.

Shortly thereafter, my detractors developed a new strategy to try to isolate me and intimidate everyone else into silence: They argued on Twitter that I should not be invited to give science seminars at other universities and coordinated replacement speakers. This is an effective and increasingly common way to ratchet up the cost of dissenting because disseminating new work to colleagues is an important part of the scientific endeavor.

When he was chosen to give the prestigious Carlson Lecture at MIT, “a new Twitter mob, composed of a group of MIT students, postdocs, and recent alumni, demanded that I be uninvited.”

MIT caved, canceling the lecture to avoid controversy.