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Campus Dogma And The New Pluralism
The Academy
By Thomas A. Shakely, For The Bulletin
The college experience was once regarded as a time to discover the richness and diversity of cultural tradition, a time to delve into matters deeply and explore the lessons of history toward the goals of discovering certain truths about humanity, and about oneself.
College was a means by which to discover “Nature’s God” and Natural Law, the transcendent philosophy of mankind that guided our Republic’s Founders.
Colleges were good and worthy insofar as they enabled their students to grasp their place within the cosmos and the meaning of a life well-lived, thereby representing a wellspring whereby civilizations could replenish themselves.
We know how strange the world has become since this old view of the university predominated. The “college experience” is more commonly understood as a time for casual sexuality and for ethical and moral experimentation.
(Odd that in this age that so prizes experimentation that rarely are conclusive judgments on the rightness or wrongness of actions ever arrived by the experimenters. One wonders to what end they are experimenting.)
And despite this new understanding of college as a time for personal pleasure and moral relaxation rather than as fidelity to the pursuit of answering the “big questions” of our time (or of all time), a new campus dogma has taken hold on the college campus, and those to blame are on both the left and the right.
Everyone wants to use everyone else and toward personal (sometimes even nefarious) ends. No wonder the average college graduate emerges from the campus so skeptical, so jaded, so unsure of whom to trust. After all, as much as the political left on campus tries to use him for activism or issue indoctrination in the classroom, the campus right often stoops to the same level in the name of fighting what it deems dangerous radicalism.
So with an overabundance of political activism on the campus, there’s little time left for real education, because real learning requires a testing of boundaries and an exploration of controversial issues.
When everyone is balkanized into his or her ideological or political niche, such meaningful and frank conversation is impossible without being branded as a traitor to the cause. “Socialist!” cries the right, the left retorting, “Fascist!”
Compounding this problem of the nichization of once-coherent campuses is the new campus dogma, which prizes faux-diversity and mock pluralism above all else, imagining that if we merely get a group that appears diverse in ethnicity that we’ll somehow have accomplished de facto pluralism. We make the error in imagining that students today understand or even care about the “life well-lived.”
Charles Murray, W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, delivered a superb speech last month on “The Happiness of the People” wherein he recounted a telling encounter with the type of young people who are likely the product of the peculiar type of education imparted by most academies: “A few of the 20-something members of the audience approached [after a speech in Zurich] and said plainly that the phrase ‘a life well-lived’ did not have meaning for them. They were having a great time with their current sex partner and new BMW and the vacation home in Majorca, and saw no voids in their lives that needed filling.”
Is this how we intended to raise our children? To say, “go earn a degree, get a job and make the cash you’ll need to live a life filled with ... stuff.” What a disappointment. After all, we know the stuff doesn’t last. The new campus dogma prohibits — tacitly or inadvertently — the discussion of the stuff that really matters.
And the results of our unhealthy focus on faux-pluralism are evident: We’ve abandoned faith in God to fight for faith in fair trade, discarded study of market economics for advocacy against sweatshops, trumpeted the need for first amendment freedoms but forgotten the virtuosity required to maintain such freedoms.
The old pluralism valued differences in ethnicity, especially if there were well-reasoned differences of opinion. The new pluralism is dedicated to the false proposition that differences in ethnicity are concerns of the first order, but that thoughtfulness is, at best, useful insofar as it furthers the political aims of the left or right.
We can do better. We have done better. The old America would assert that it is our duty to do better. It starts with a new study of what authentic pluralism really is, and how an appreciation of its beauty can make our experiences with others —left or right — so much more human.
Thomas A. Shakely is president of The Other Half, a nonprofit for renewal in higher education. He can be reached at tom@tomshakely.com.
College was a means by which to discover “Nature’s God” and Natural Law, the transcendent philosophy of mankind that guided our Republic’s Founders.
Colleges were good and worthy insofar as they enabled their students to grasp their place within the cosmos and the meaning of a life well-lived, thereby representing a wellspring whereby civilizations could replenish themselves.
We know how strange the world has become since this old view of the university predominated. The “college experience” is more commonly understood as a time for casual sexuality and for ethical and moral experimentation.
(Odd that in this age that so prizes experimentation that rarely are conclusive judgments on the rightness or wrongness of actions ever arrived by the experimenters. One wonders to what end they are experimenting.)
And despite this new understanding of college as a time for personal pleasure and moral relaxation rather than as fidelity to the pursuit of answering the “big questions” of our time (or of all time), a new campus dogma has taken hold on the college campus, and those to blame are on both the left and the right.
Everyone wants to use everyone else and toward personal (sometimes even nefarious) ends. No wonder the average college graduate emerges from the campus so skeptical, so jaded, so unsure of whom to trust. After all, as much as the political left on campus tries to use him for activism or issue indoctrination in the classroom, the campus right often stoops to the same level in the name of fighting what it deems dangerous radicalism.
So with an overabundance of political activism on the campus, there’s little time left for real education, because real learning requires a testing of boundaries and an exploration of controversial issues.
When everyone is balkanized into his or her ideological or political niche, such meaningful and frank conversation is impossible without being branded as a traitor to the cause. “Socialist!” cries the right, the left retorting, “Fascist!”
Compounding this problem of the nichization of once-coherent campuses is the new campus dogma, which prizes faux-diversity and mock pluralism above all else, imagining that if we merely get a group that appears diverse in ethnicity that we’ll somehow have accomplished de facto pluralism. We make the error in imagining that students today understand or even care about the “life well-lived.”
Charles Murray, W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, delivered a superb speech last month on “The Happiness of the People” wherein he recounted a telling encounter with the type of young people who are likely the product of the peculiar type of education imparted by most academies: “A few of the 20-something members of the audience approached [after a speech in Zurich] and said plainly that the phrase ‘a life well-lived’ did not have meaning for them. They were having a great time with their current sex partner and new BMW and the vacation home in Majorca, and saw no voids in their lives that needed filling.”
Is this how we intended to raise our children? To say, “go earn a degree, get a job and make the cash you’ll need to live a life filled with ... stuff.” What a disappointment. After all, we know the stuff doesn’t last. The new campus dogma prohibits — tacitly or inadvertently — the discussion of the stuff that really matters.
And the results of our unhealthy focus on faux-pluralism are evident: We’ve abandoned faith in God to fight for faith in fair trade, discarded study of market economics for advocacy against sweatshops, trumpeted the need for first amendment freedoms but forgotten the virtuosity required to maintain such freedoms.
The old pluralism valued differences in ethnicity, especially if there were well-reasoned differences of opinion. The new pluralism is dedicated to the false proposition that differences in ethnicity are concerns of the first order, but that thoughtfulness is, at best, useful insofar as it furthers the political aims of the left or right.
We can do better. We have done better. The old America would assert that it is our duty to do better. It starts with a new study of what authentic pluralism really is, and how an appreciation of its beauty can make our experiences with others —left or right — so much more human.
Thomas A. Shakely is president of The Other Half, a nonprofit for renewal in higher education. He can be reached at tom@tomshakely.com.
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