Once upon a time, we didn’t have to think about political correctness. And we survived as a culture! We self-corrected, we became more sensitive to others, we learned to accept and appreciate diversity. It was sometimes difficult, even painful. But a lot of it was organic. Often we slipped up. We fell backward, and sometimes it even took appropriate legislation to provide better guardrails for our behavior. Such was the forward march of mankind.

But today, the bludgeon of political correctness hangs over all of us. And nowhere worse than on our college campuses. The fear of free speech, the absurdity of safe spaces, the desire to silence unpopular ideas and the seeking out of problems and conflicts that don’t really exist, are all hallmarks of where we are today.

But how did we get here, and is there any path out that does not divides us still further, polarize us even more and further enhance the sanctimony of those who consider their ideas singularly virtuous.

Skidmore professor Robert Boyers, the subject of a story in this week’s New Yorker takes us into the belly of the beast of political correctness in his new book The Tyranny of Virtue: Identity, the Academy, and the Hunt for Political Heresies.

My conversation with Robert Boyers: