It seems like we ought to be able to study these issues, skepticism, recognizing bigotry, and so on, without falling into politics, post-modernism, victim-thinking, and violence. Skepticism by its nature rejects these things.

I think it's great they're studying those things you mention: how gender, ethnicity, and the post-colonial world. I hope my kids are still interested in sharing those books with me when they're at that age. I can learn something from the new theories and offer a perspective of someone who went to college in the 90s.
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Regarding the Halloween costume restriction, I see this as coming directly from how we treat young children. The new theory is it's child abuse not to have some adult must be hoving over children to resolve even the slights disagreements and discomforts, even things the children are handling themselves. My kids aren't supposed to play games at recess without getting them approved. They can have no elements of violence. It's not working, thankfully, because my kids and their friends run around after school making machine gun noises playing all kinds of games. They know the rules are bogus. I'm purposely having them do things on their own that the teachers tell them never to do until they're adults. My kids are unreliable narrators, but they said some teacher said never touch a match until you're an adult. It doesn't surprise me they get to college and need classes on adulting and need to protected from the slightest rude or distasteful behaviors.

Regarding the term Western civilization, it grates on me too. It implies Enlightenment values are just a regional custom. It leads people to say we shouldn't rely only on Western medicine just because we're in the West. But Western medicine really means scientific evidence-based medicine. Western civilization really means reason and individualism. It took sway in the West first, but continuing to associate it with the name of a region hundreds of years later actually undermines Enlightenment (aka "Western") values. Reason and individual liberty are for everyone.

It is scary what is happening on our college campuses.