As a therapist, clinical ethicist and trauma researcher specializing in moral injury and moral distress, I know well the damaging effects of when a person’s core moral foundations are violated in high-stakes situations. I also recognize when their integrity is compromised due to forces beyond their control or from repeatedly not having their deeply held values respected individually, collectively or institutionally.
As a vice president of university relations and chief communications officer at California Institute of Integral Studies, I also know well the emotional minefield that college campuses have become. Every day, I survey the precarious landscape of moral offenses, complaints and activations, carefully assessing which ones might explode, sending the community into an uproar, and tiptoe through the harrowing task of crafting the appropriate “safe” language, praying one of the chosen words won’t detonate some hidden trigger.
In the wake of the Hamas-Israel war, this task has been near impossible — even calling it a “war,” not a “genocide” or vice-versa, triggered students on all sides of the conflict.
Some wrote aggressive and condemning protest letters to the board of trustees and senior leadership demanding accountability and change that supports their specific cause, opinion or side. Others opted to take up the virtue mantle, voicing their outrage on behalf of those whom they deemed to be silenced. Some went so far as to bring their moral outrage to the classroom, turning online learning forums into their personal battlefields of blame, shame and accusation.
Moral outrage is far from a new concept, but its ubiquitous nature, scope and expression today, are. Thanks largely to social media, collective moral outrage has skyrocketed in recent years. Researchers at New York University found that “every moral or emotional word” in a tweet increased the rate of retweets by 15 to 20 percent. This is curious because according to the Pew Research Center, about two-thirds of U.S. adults (65 percent) consider “people being too easily offended” to be a “major problem” for the country.
While it might be tempting to try to extinguish moral outrage as the solution, that would be misguided. Feelings of anger, disgust or frustration directed toward others who are deemed to have violated a person’s ethical values or standards are not themselves a problem, per se; rather, it’s the dysregulated, recalcitrant expression of them.
Research co-authored by Cynda Hylton Rushton, a leading scholar in the field of clinical ethics, shows that, like other emotions, moral outrage has an embodied response. When activated, the nervous system can become stuck in a constant state of arousal, triggering a torrent of stress hormones that leave people overwhelmed, persistently anxious and reactive or depleted.
Essentially, our rational, meaning-making mind shuts down, giving way to the older areas of the brain that are wired for protection. This shutdown not only diminishes the capacity for empathy, collaboration and clear thinking but also fuels destruction rather than solutions.
Universities are supposed to be centers of learning, reflection, discernment and transformation. Places where people come face-to-face with ideas, people and situations that push them to the limits of knowledge, expression and belief, and call into question their understanding of themselves, others and the world. In the end, it makes them stronger and more able to cope with adversity and a diversity of thought.
Such transformative growth doesn’t happen without resilience, yet research also suggests that students today have less resilience and moral strength than previous generations.
Enter moral resilience.
Moral resilience, still a nascent concept, focuses on the moral aspects of human experience, the complexity of decisions, obligations and relationships and the inevitable challenges that ignite conscience, confusion and distress.
Because the moral domain is connected with all dimensions of human resources, building moral resilience benefits the whole person and whole communities. It requires self-regulation; bringing the fighting, frightened or frozen nervous system back into balance. Doing so creates space to notice what is happening inside of us and to regulate our reactions so that we can see the situation more clearly and attune ourselves to the bigger moral landscape.
Ruston first introduced the concept of moral resilience in her work with nurses facing moral distress. Since then, others, including myself, have expanded it to other populations.
For colleges and universities struggling to manage gripping moral outrage, it would be a bold and courageous step forward to abandon the typical “contain and restrain” or “damp and stamp” responses, which require administrators, faculty and staff to tread with trepidation through today’s moral minefields.
Instead, institutions should embrace a proactive and sustainable model of moral resilience. Here’s what that could look like:
- Don’t fear, enable or deny moral outrage on campus. Approach it as a natural part of the human condition, necessary for constructive change, growth and transformation.
- Don’t allow moral outrage to become a point of intimidation or psychological sabotage. Shift inflammable moral outrage to one that is grounded and principled. Use that energy to focus attention on what is fundamentally at stake and a source of insight and inspiration for principled discernment and mindful action.
- Don’t allow the buildup of moral outrage to turn into moral contagion, which spreads across the campus community and becomes, as Rushton says, “the glue that holds a group together” in moral outrage.
- Embed moral resilience across the university: in pedagogy and praxis, staff performance and development, campus workshops and initiatives. Why not put it in the strategic plan?
- Include the body. Principled moral outrage requires real-time self-regulation.
- Nurture these practices for building moral resilience: self-mastery, self-awareness, self-expression, meaning-making and connectedness.
- Everyone is susceptible to moral outrage, and these volatile times aren’t making it any easier. The question is, are we adept at using it constructively?
Unrestrained, unconsidered and ungrounded moral outrage can fuel conflict, amplify differences and compromise relationships on college and university campuses, but also at home and in communities.
It’s time to get on a path of moral resilience — it’s what’s necessary for building communities of conscience and courage.
Michele DeMarco, Ph.D. is vice president of university relations and chief communications officer at California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. She is an award-winning author and a therapist, clinical ethicist and trauma researcher, specializing in moral injury and resilience. Her forthcoming book is titled, “Holding Onto Air: The Art and Science of Building a Resilient Spirit.”