"'So what’s sacred at a university?' he asks. 'Victims are sacred,' he answers."

Can Jonathan Haidt Calm the Culture Wars?

By Evan R. Goldstein

"When I went to Yale, in 1981, it said above the main gate ‘Lux et Veritas’: Light and Truth. We are here to find truth," Haidt says as he paces the stage at the Students for Liberty conference in Washington. "This is our heritage all the way back to Aristotle, Plato, Socrates." But the pursuit of truth is being supplanted by a new mission, he warns, the pursuit of social justice. He paraphrases Marx: "The point is not to understand the world; the point is to change it."

It’s human nature to make things sacred — people, places, books, ideas, Haidt says. "So what’s sacred at a university?" he asks. "Victims are sacred," he answers. And a victimhood culture offers only two ways to get prestige: Be a victim, or, if you can’t manage that, stand up for victims. How? "By punishing the hell out of anyone who in any way, shape, or form, even inadvertently, marginalizes a member of a victim class."