The academic world is prone to fads, and one of the latest is “mindfulness” studies. Is this a new body of knowledge? Not exactly.

In today’s Martin Center article, Christopher L. Schilling looks at this phenomenon.

He writes:

At Bucknell University, for instance, students are offered a “mindfulness menu” featuring instructions for DIY body scrubs, eye masks, lotions, and similar indulgences. At Yale, students can enroll in a four-week Koru mindfulness course that promises to help them to become “kinder” to themselves (is there anyone else?) or to craft their “very own meditation bracelet with a variety of beautiful beads.”

Is this just another amenity for students accustomed to being pampered? No. Schilling continues, “They have emerged as an academic field that encourages students to calm what ought to be active minds.But mindfulness programs on campus have moved well beyond weekend retreats and self-help courses. They have now embedded themselves within higher education itself, emerging as an academic field that, paradoxically, encourages students to calm what ought to be active minds and to think as little as possible.”

Colleges and universities have academic programs in “mindfulness” now, including graduate degrees. For example: “In 2023, Harvard opened the Thich Nhat Hanh Center for Mindfulness in Public Health in the T.H. Chan School of Public Health. In his New York Times bestseller The Art of Power, Thich Nhat Hanh writes, ‘To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.’ While these lines might be calming as poetry, they are most obviously destructive as self-help.”

The various notions about “mindfulness” might be good advice, but hardly require years of study (not to mention a large monetary expense).