Picture of tower of babel today12/7/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() This decline of intellectual vitality has multiple roots but let me highlight just one: the proliferation of campus identity politics. A million soapbox speakers can be a cacophony of noise, not a marketplace of ideas. It is that last element, not some modern Tower of Intellectual Babel, that Gottfried’s upbeat colleague ignores, and in my estimation is the part of the intellectual equation that has atrophied on today’s campus. ![]() Instead, the question is one of being able to challenge these viewpoints so as to pursue truth. That means/ends relationship understood, viewpoint diversity is not the issue. As my alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s mission statement put it, the University ”should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.” Absent candor, campus intellectual life is more akin to Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park where untold orators prattle on to largely silent onlookers. We must not conflate the greater variety of expression per se with intellectual vitality.įacilitating the expression of multiple voices is but a means to an end that end is the discovery of truth and that discovery requires vigorous unfettered debate. Just cataloguing these “voices,” no matter how numerous, varied and outspoken, misses the larger picture when calculating openness. I think Gottfried has it right, although for reasons that he understates. Who could possibly deny today’s cornucopia of divergent views? Thus depicted, Gottfried appears to have a weak hand. And let’s not forget the Internet-facilitated openness: e-mail lists, blogs and on-line journals that open once parochial campuses to worldwide forums. He might have also added the multi-culturally themed courses and departments, a far cry from the monolithic white-male-dominated past. In effect, this colleague implies that the increased presence of people of color, more women, gay and lesbian groups, Native Americans, varied international students, and the disabled enhances the university’s intellectual climate. But he tells of a younger colleague who insists the very opposite. He argues that campus life was far more open when he began his academic career in the 1960s than it is in today’s PC-dominated world. Paul Gottfried’s recent Pope Center essay The Academy Now and Then raises important issues regarding whether today’s campus permits the expression of unpopular ideas. ![]()
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