The removal of the American spine

The main point of this article is that in modern society, everyone is encouraged to obsess over everyone else's sensitivities instead of people just dealing with their uncomfortable feelings like adults. The article says that this causes a lot of problems because people can barely even communicate anymore due to the filters that they have to apply to their speech, and also no one is developing the "thick skin" that people need in the real world.
"Emotional reasoning dominates many campus debates and discussions." 
What Lukianoff is saying here is that the "Coddling" is counterproductive because emotions are taking precedence over logic and knowledge, which is poisoning education (135). This is not to say that people shouldn't be aware of others' issues, but rather people should learn the balance between getting offended at anything that opposes their opinion, and keeping an open mind to new points of view (135). The article sums up the argument well with the following quote:
"According to the most-basic tenets of psychology, helping people with anxiety disorders avoid the things they fear is misguided." Anyone familiar with certain therapeutic treatments for anxiety orders should agree that avoidance is a terrible policy, as stressful situations in the real world are inevitable and a lot of therapy is based on exposures to anxiety-inducing situations (73). Lukianoff would tell you that colleges are striving "to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense."(72) This isn't any kind of solution to the problem, as it doesn't solve anything; it only puts off the inevitable. This problem has already caused too much damage, and as Lukianoff states, it's even bad "for American Democracy, which has already been paralyzed by worsening partisanship".

 Lukianoff, Greg, and Jonathan Haidt. "The Coddling of the American Mind." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, Sept. 2015. Web. 10 Oct. 2015.

Graff, Gerald, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel Durst. They Say / I Say. 3rd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2015. Print.