A couple of psychology researchers from Northwestern University did a study of nearly 1,500 young men and women enrolled at both Northwestern and the University of Michigan, asking this: “Have you ever pretended to hold more progressive views than you truly endorse to succeed socially or academically?”
The result? “An astounding 88% said yes.”
They conclude that “on today’s college campuses, students are not maturing — they’re managing. Beneath a facade of progressive slogans and institutional virtue-signaling lies a quiet psychological crisis, driven by the demands of ideological conformity.” They call it performative morality.
Here they explain what’s irrevocably lost, from a human development, psychological standpoint. It’s tragic:
Late adolescence and early adulthood represent a narrow and non-replicable developmental window. It is during this stage that individuals begin the lifelong work of integrating personal experience with inherited values, forming the foundations of moral reasoning, internal coherence, and emotional resilience.
But when belief is prescriptive, and ideological divergence is treated as social risk, the integrative process stalls. Rather than forging a durable sense of self through trial, error, and reflection, students learn to compartmentalize. Publicly, they conform; privately, they question — often in isolation. This split between outer presentation and inner conviction not only fragments identity but arrests its development.
The researchers found that the overwhelming majority (either around 70% or well above 70%) don’t buy the progressive orthodoxy on gender identity, boys in girls’ sports, “family values” or “politics” in general.
One of the alarming outcomes of this boot camp of progressive oppression is that after four years of it, they emerge “morally confused” and actually questioning the value of authenticity, since it was “once considered a psychological good, [and] has [now] become a social liability.”
And this fragmentation doesn’t end at the classroom door. 73% of students reported mistrust in conversations about these values with close friends. Nearly half said they routinely conceal beliefs in intimate relationships for fear of ideological fallout. This is not simply peer pressure — it is identity regulation at scale, and it is being institutionalized.
The researchers even have a name for it: “self-abandonment.”
How unutterably tragic.
They report the kids felt relief just being a part of the study. That “the act of telling the truth felt “radical.”
What are we doing to our young people? This is a kind of mental hazing, a kind of developmental stripping in a place where they are meant to expand and grow.
I’ve written about the left’s authoritarian problem, the a**-backwards opinion of one progressive college professor who insisted that the idea of hiring conservative professors is a bad thing, and the point of view of one young college applicant on how to “game” the academic system.
This study affirms all of them. And not in a good way. It is the natural result of the oppression progressive orthodoxy brings and we can’t look away. It simply must be addressed or we need to rethink, very seriously, the value of any higher education. Why would we send our children to places where they will undergo a kind of Vulcan “mind sifter” like in Star Trek, the original series?
As American Thinker’s Christopher Chantrill wrote in his fascinating article this morning: “We all know that our universities are the very last place to go if you want a free and open discussion of ideas. Only approved progressive ideas are permitted, and don’t you forget it.”
There are certain professions, like medicine, the law, and others, which require lengthy educations, but at what cost? When do we say enough is enough?
Image generated by AI.