A collection of 391 posts
But a further question remains. Where are the men—and, today, women—of real merit that our form of government allows to come to the fore?
Nevertheless, Drayton’s diatribe does reveal something important—not much about me, something about him, but mostly about the vices that fester in certain reaches of our universities, which serve to undermine rational dialogue and public norms of liberal civility.
The rich kids at Gulliver, those who drove Range Rovers and boasted of extravagant vacations, were not black. But at Amherst, many of my new wealthy classmates were.
This is a dimension where knowledge of the world—that same prior knowledge that needs activating—is the last thing that it would occur to anyone to actually teach children in schools.
Toby Young talks to Bruce Gilley, professor of political science at Portland State, about not being able to get his course on conservative political thought approved by his faculty, and his efforts to fight back against progressive authoritarianism on campus. He recently published a piece in Quillette about why he
psychological scientists recognize unwarranted causal inferences when evaluating others’ research but miss it in their own, perhaps because of ideological and self-serving biases.
To a modern research scientist, all of this will seem like common sense, and such principles now are taught even in some undergraduate courses.
Clearly it is possible to do politics in philosophy without doing political philosophy.
The spread of mass education may have exemplified the promise of liberal civilization. The spread of mass education may have exemplified the promise of liberal civilization. But, without an understanding and appreciation of what allowed it to flourish, it could also accelerate its dissolution.
Right now, I’m maybe most spooked by how a living, breathing cultural memory is seeming to evaporate.
If the whole academe is meant to pursue truth, then it can be fine for different traditions to develop that are not perfect ideological representatives of society at large.
The ethical shortcomings of the 1969 Cornell student rebellion, which appear so glaring today, were anything but clear to us radical activists at the time.
The recently concluded libel trial involving Oberlin College offered a demonstration of this phenomenon on the part of both the defendants and much of the media covering the case.
Claims over what is being measured by a standardized assessment (referred to as a test’s construct) are where claims of scientific rigor can distort understanding of social goals associated with a particular test.
Clear language engenders clear thought, and clear thought is the most important benefit of education.