Higher Education & Male Bovine Feces
Notre Dame Professor Christian Smith has had enough, as he writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Some money quotes:
I have had nearly enough bulls***. The
manure has piled up so deep in the hallways, classrooms, and
administration buildings of American higher education that I am not sure
how much longer I can wade through it and retain my sanity and
integrity.
Even worse, the accumulated effects of all the academic BS are
contributing to this country’s disastrous political condition and,
ultimately, putting at risk the very viability and character of decent
civilization.
And . . .
BS is the grossly lopsided political ideology of the faculty of many
disciplines, especially in the humanities and social sciences, creating a
homogeneity of worldview to which those faculties are themselves
oblivious, despite claiming to champion difference, diversity, and
tolerance.
And . . .
BS is the ascendant "culture of offense" that shuts down the open
exchange of ideas and mutual accountability to reason and argument. It
is university leaders’ confused and fearful capitulation to that secular
neo-fundamentalist speech-policing.
And . . .
Ideas and their accompanying practices have consequences. What is formed
in colleges and universities over decades shows up for better or worse
in the character and quality of our public servants, political
campaigns, public-policy debates, citizen participation, social capital,
media programming, lower school education, consumer preferences,
business ethics, entertainments, and much more. [In other words, the blame for much of today's societal ills can be laid at the doorsteps of academia.]
And . . .
Much of American higher education now embodies the problems it was
intended to transcend and transform: unreason, duplicity, refusals of
accountability, incapacities to grasp complexity and see the big
picture, and resorts to semi-masked forms of coercion.
The most disturbing consequences of this long-term corruption are now
playing out in our national political culture and institutions.
Well worth the time to read Professor Smith's complete essay here.
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