It is a great source of great enjoyment to me to be back on a college campus and and have a chance not only to talk to people from this school from other institutions of higher education around the state who are faculty and administrators but to meet with you students as well. That's I know for me as I'm sure for those of you who are teachers. This is the great joy in life. This is the reason to be involved in this is to meet with these young people who who have such interesting insights into the things that we are concerned about and who hold all of our futures in their hands in many ways, you know, it's a great time to be a college student. I know that that will be a hard case to make with many of you but it is if you think about it, there is so much to learn now that wasn't even available to know about when you and I those of us in my generation were inIt's there's there's all that history that's been created since you and I were in college and some of those stories are wonderful stories and there's all that history that we didn't know about when you and I were in college and and that I think is another reason why it's such a good time to be a student but it's also very hard in many other ways and I wanted to talk tonight about how the university looks from the students perspective. I'm very interested also of course and how it looks from faculty perspective. But tonight I really wanted to come at it from this slightly different angle. And I think that when we we talk about this or about any of the ills that afflict higher education in the United States right now, we really do need to begin by talking about root causes. It's very easy and I try not to do it but like you I fall into it to use shorthand talk about political correctness, for example, or even to sort of lump it all together.Speech codes, many people do that, you know to sort of symbolize what it is that has gone wrong, but I think that there is a much deeper problem and you all know this what I think is that our colleges and universities are suffering from a kind of identity crisis. Now, they don't know what they are anymore. It used to be quite clear to everyone involved in this Enterprise that there was a name there was a goal for higher education and that aim and that goal was to discover the truth.This is not use not to be a radical idea at all. I mean it was the basis on which our colleges and universities were founded and if you go across the country and you look at mottos you look at the words that are engraved above the door of the main College building again. And again, you'll see the idea of Truth light and truth that Yale and it said, Indiana, I think also at Northwestern another one school not so far from here whatsoever. Things are true where I went to where did my undergraduate years at Colorado College the main building the main classroom building Palmer Hall had engraved in big letters across the top ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. No those were words that when I was 18 19 20, I mean, I love those words. I found them so uplifting so inspiring you shallAll the truth and the truth shall make you free. Well imagine my chagrin was about a year and a half ago. Now when I received my annual no, not my annual my I think they come every other month my alumni news and there was a little note from the editor inside the front saying that nowadays those words the words inscribed above Palmer Halls entrance nowadays. Those words were as likely to provoke a smile. That's a quote as anything else not because they called up warm memories, but because they were so hopelessly because they are so hopelessly naiveIsn't that interesting? They provoked a smile because they're so naive a student intern that I had last summer and I'm lucky to have him again this summer who goes to Amherst told me a story last year about being in class at Amherst and he mentioned the idea of Truth and a discussion in his class and one of his classes when he did his Professor called him a Philistine. Now as the student told the story to me, I mean it wasn't completely devastating the professor said this was a sufficient amount of Good Humor so that the student didn't have to conclude that he was a complete and total Barbarian just that he was untutored youth young person, you know who hadn't had the chance to learn yet that there is no such thing as as truth. Now I even hesitate to say this in a group that I know has people in it who have studied Philosophy for many more years than I have but I think all of us in this room know the truth question hasn't been settled. If you if you know anything about the history of philosophy at all, you know, it has not been settled that there are people who have spent lifetimes thinking about this issue analyzing this issue and some of them have ended up thoroughgoing Skeptics, but others haven't truth question hasn't been settled but we certainly act as though it has been settled in the humanities. Not those of us in this room perhaps but our disciplines act as though it has been settled and there is no such thing as truth. I sometimes think that the reason for this is is a kind of fear of fear of dogmatism. I fear that if you say well there is such thing as truth and they'll be some of some people who will run around and pick up on that and say and I know it I possess it and by gosh, I'm not going to hold still until the rest of you see the truth that I see two, but it doesn't have to be that way at all and I don't think there are many disciplines that have behaved in such an unsophisticated way for a very long time. Truth is a goal who's is something we seek and I think that most of us have always known that we seek it as fallible human beings. We're not omniscient. We're not going to get there. We're not going to wrap our arms around it. But truth is the goal. Truth is the thing we seek and it does it does exist. Well, at least you can make that case the issue has not been settled and when people like my summer intern say something about truth in class that's not an entirely unreasonable thing for them to do in the whole history of human thought but the fact that it isn't an entirely unreasonable Viewpoint doesn't get them very far today given the thinking that is fashionable in the humanities. I don't need to repeat it for you, but maybe for our radio audience. I should the the point that is made again and again in classrooms and in seminars across the country, there is no truth. Everything that we think is true is dictated by political interest. And since there is no truth and since everything we think is true is dictated by political interest. We might as well Embrace politics. There's no sense trying to avoid it. It's there. It's inevitable. So will embrace it and this becomes the rationale for introducing political viewpoints into scholarship political viewpoints in a teaching political viewpoints into into the classroom. I don't talk to just academic audiences. In fact, I went through a phase where I would get so beat up on when I talk to academic audiences that I just didn't do it for a while and I would go talk to people in that other world out there and they have a little trouble following this line of thought partly because it never occurred to them that there wasn't such a thing as truth and then explaining you all about how well people are saying it's politics and we should improve somebody would inevitably say to me look that idea is just a little too complicated. It's a little too convoluted and it's not going to go anywhere and I would have to explain to them that no wrong. It has gone very very far indeed as those of you in this room know particularly those of you who are in the humanities. This is an enormously influential idea in the humanities. Let me just read you one quote that I came across that I think illustrates the point very well. This is this is a quotation from two historians at the University of Pennsylvania. They write and I quote. We are all engaged in writing a kind of propaganda rather than believe in the absolute truth of what we are writing. We must believe in the moral or political position. We are taking with it historians should assess an argument on the basis of its persuasiveness its political utility and its political sincerity. This is really stunning. It's not faithful as to the past that matters these two historians are saying it's political usefulness in the present is not whether an historian has read widely and and thought deeply it's not whether he or she is honestly evaluated as much evidence as possible. What's important none of those things. What is important is whether the story told effectively advances the proper agenda and when I read things like this and I have to tell you I read things like this quite often. I am reminded as I know you must be of George Orwell's 1984. I have been rereading it lately and it is a book of such wisdom. It is astonishing to me in a book of such prescience a book of such a foresight. This is the situation you remember that the protagonist of the book honestly thinks that two plus two equals four. But of course you think that's true, of course in in this world in which he lives 2 plus 2 will equal 5 if it is politically useful, but of course, I'm not talking about a futuristic novel with these ideas is as you're well aware. I'm talking about a line of thought that is right now enormously important and it is particularly important in the in the humanities since all knowledge reflects political interest faculty members are perfectly Justified or so, the thinking goes in using the classroom to advance political agendas. It is this rationale that accounts for speakers at learn and conventions and I hate to quote from the modern language association meeting at such fertile territory. I can't help it though at that one recent meeting. They were discussing this topic the task. You have to listen closely the task of the politically committed cultural worker in today's University. Not the task of the teacher not the task of the scholar, but the task of the politically committed cultural worker. And if this rationale my research assistant Lynn wrote a wonderful piece in the Wall Street Journal about the College art associations last annual meeting. It's the same line of thinking that accounts for what's happening in our history at one of the recent College Art Association meetings one faculty members stood up and told her fellow teachers that they should avoid teaching women artists like Mary Cassatt in Bear to more so because these women painted pictures of women and children and thus and I quote reinforced patriarchal thought Now I don't want to make a case here that lacks credibility. I know that when you were my age when I was in school. I had professors who had political biases. I had lots of professors who had political biases. Some of my very best professors had political biases and they were never biases of the right. I will say they were always biases of the left but the difference is those professors never thought it was their job to transfer their whole package is a biases into my head. They were perfectly honest and open about what their biases were, but they were also perfectly honest and open and honorable about listening to arguments from from the other side. The situation has changed so much now and I've been amazed at the way it accelerated just during the six years. I was at the endowment in the beginning. Radical faculty members skirted around the edges of what was going on in classrooms and they wouldn't really come out and say it by the time I left in January people were coming very much directly out and saying what was happening in classrooms. This was one article that I just happened to cross. I mean, you don't have to set out to find these articles just in the course of your life. You come across them. This is from Harvard educational review. It's a professor from one of my alma maters University of Wisconsin. And in this article, she urges her fellow faculty members and I quote. Well, no, I'm not quoting yet. She urges them to be open about their intention. And now I'm quoting to appropriate public resources classroom school supplies teacher Professor salaries academic requirements and agrees to appropriate those resources to further various Progressive political agendas. Isn't that just an amazingly direct statement? Nobody would have said that seven eight years ago. Now people write it. It's published in Harvard educational review. This professor went on in this article, which I thought was totally stunning to describe a course that she teaches at the University of Wisconsin course it she's taught they're called curriculum and instruction 607 which is a pretty innocuous title. But in this course, she gathers together students and teaches them how to demonstrate teaches in the principles of political demonstrations, and then they go out on the campus and conduct three political demonstrations. And for this they get three hours credits. Now I was as I say, I went to the University of Wisconsin. I know that student demonstrations are part of the culture their students have always demonstrated at the University of Wisconsin. I was there in the late 60s. I mean, it was sort of a steady complete ongoing demonstration. But even in the late 60s, nobody thought of giving credit for it. This is an entirely an entirely new idea. And this is interesting one of the things that Norman mentioned that I'm writing a book. One of the things I want to talk about is how this affects the culture mean there there is a sense in which people dismiss what's going on in colleges and universities as academic know not having an impact on the larger culture, but this does affect the culture and you can see parallels and one of the funnier parallels that I've come across recently is right here in the in I think it was Minneapolis. Is it Minneapolis laner st. Paul? I think it was Minneapolis. There's a middle school here Chiron Middle School the teacher at Chiron Middle School took the kids to Earth Day. These are 6th and 7th. Maybe fifth sixth and seventh graders took the kids to Earth Day so they could see how you demonstrate to protect the environment right? She brought them back to school and within the next two weeks. They all got up one day and ran out of the classroom ran across the street locked arms and conducted a protest. They were demanding the right for example to decide what they would wear there had been some issue about what your T-shirt could and couldn't say at Chiron middle school. So they conducted a demonstration 5th 6th and 7th graders when the teacher went out and the principal try to get him to come back. They chanted heck. No we won't go Well, that's a little off that the main train of my thought here but it is interesting these things do filter down these things do move off campus in into into the into the larger society. I after I read about the curriculum instruction 607 class at Wisconsin the Wisconsin Association of Scholars have been trying to get me to come it's harder to go to Wisconsin than it is to come here. It's to plane rides to go to Madison, you know, so it was I think it's colder in Madison in here don't ever tell people in Madison. I said that but it was winter, you know, and I didn't I didn't really want to do this, but when I read about curriculum instruction 607, I did go and quite enjoyed meeting with that very active chapter there. There's a professor at the University of California at San Louis Obispo who wrote an article in a recent issue of College English making the point. This is a very interesting article because he began by saying I am not radical like those other fellows. I don't believe like James said for example that reading and writing are forms of Oppression and that if we teach Standard English Were Somehow making these youngsters into less authentic beings, so we began by trying to distance himself from the radicals, but then he went on in his article to write about the right way to do these things the right way to bring students to a proper level of political awareness. He says, you've got it very your strategy, you know, you wouldn't do it. You wouldn't bring them to an appreciation of proper proper political awareness. You wouldn't do it the same way at an elite Ivy League school as you would at a community college and then he went on to describe how he does it at his And he said what he does is challenged students belief that America offers them freedom of choice in the chance to get ahead not just challenges. He writes he shows them in his English class and I quote the odds against their attaining room at the top in his English class. The way their education has channeled them toward a mid-level professional and social slot and condition them into authoritarian Conformity. This becomes the agenda of English class. I'm always amazed by these stories about what a class ridden Society we have just as I'm Amazed by stories about how racist and sexist we are we certainly have flaws. We certainly have much progress to make in terms of racial Justice terms of justice for women in terms of making sure that social Mobility is as open as it possibly can be But what other country on the face of the Earth has done it better what other country on the face of the Earth has immigrants coming again and again and again because they still believe the tail and they prove the tale about pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. Richard Rodriguez is a wonderful writer and his most recent book talks about the new immigrant waves who are renewing the work ethic in this country. They are bringing to us what we are managing to lose ourselves and to tell the students who've been here for a while doesn't work. They are showing us the Koreans are showing is this delay oceans are showing is this the people from Central America are showing us is that this isn't true but in an English class we're teaching that Now I don't mean to to be to leave the impression that students just sit and accept all of this on faith. I don't think that's true there. What was that famous phrase? They're not potted plants. They are not converted instantly upon hearing these things. They will complain many of the complaints that I come across have to do with feminism in the classroom. And I even hate to say even hate to say this. I mean, I these are very hard topics to talk about because for women this is such a much better world than it was 20 years ago. Our society is so much better than it was 20 years ago when I first went out to get a teaching job. I was asked if I were married or if I really interested in the job. Isn't that amazing how far we have come in 20 years. So we're not talking about equal rights here because I think most of the women in this room are firmly committed to the idea that that women that all people should have equal rights. We're talking about another Step Beyond that that is something that a lot of us have trouble following along with and it often appears in the classroom and I come across student complaints about it and I recently came across an article that began with a list of these student complaints this professor had taken all the complaints about her feminist teaching and and listed them one student wrote. I feel this course was dominated and overpowered by feminists doctrines and ideals another wrote. I found it very offensive that all of our readings focused on feminism. Now, I let me explain I should have said this at the beginning. This is not a woman's studies course. This is an English course freshman English or first your literature. Another one wrote the teacher consistently channels class discussions around feminism. She does not spend time discussing the comments that oppose her beliefs. In fact, she usually twist them around to support her beliefs. Well the articles I say started out with these and I was actually kind of heart and when I came across it because I thought here's a professor's taking her students. Seriously, you know, they're complaining and she's going to talk about their objections, but it turned out that was not the point at all. The point was simply to list these objections to show what feminist professors have to put up with. Not to take them seriously, but simply to show the kind of resistance that feminist professors encounter. They were exhibit a to this professor to her. They were a starting point for discussing the resistance that must be overcome and I quote in order to get our students to identify with a political agenda of feminism. Well the idea that that professors should be impervious to student complaints about feminist teaching in classrooms is becoming a staple in feminist literature. In fact, it's even become a kind of badge of honor. I've several times come across this idea. The more your students complain about feminist teaching in the classroom the more it proves that you are doing a good job more resistance. You set up the more it makes the case that this is what your students really needed after all. So it can be pretty hard to win if you're a student. I mean think about it for a minute. If you complain about the professor having a political agenda that will be taken as evidence of how much you need. The agenda. If you argue the consequences can be worse because professors do have the power of the grade and I cannot tell you how many times I encounter young people who say something to the effect of well, it's not what I really believed but I just wrote it because I needed the grade and I wanted to get out of there is a kind of cynicism that that develops about education and is I think cause for for serious concern professors not only the power of the grade they have the power to shape the course of a debate in a classroom and a professor can make saying something that opposes his or her beliefs very unpleasant. Let me just I think individual stories are always the best way to make this point. So let me just read what a student in Ohio wrote not long ago. In a course. I took last year. He wrote a Maverick student said that he agreed with the Supreme Court Justices view that a particular affirmative action program would unconstitutionally discriminate on the basis of race. During the next few minutes a couple of students vehement. We objected one raised her voice significantly and began to yell at him. The other also yelled at him in the following 15 minutes. The professor did not speak instead. He took other volunteers almost all of these students jumped on the bandwagon berating the one Maverick student the professor gave him finally one more chance to speak by this time. The student was quite flustered and incoherent. Well, the student who was describing this incident noted that and again, I quote the class learned that bringing out such controversial views would carry a high social cost. They would be less likely to repeat the error of their fellow student. Now, I think it's always important to be really clear that there are so many fine professors in our colleges and universities who would not dream of having this happen in a classroom people who are appalled at seeing it going on in colleges and universities and I think it's also important to be clear and I think Norman sort of made this point at the beginning this isn't something that just conservatives worry about I find my allies on campuses are not conservative because aren't any there are you know, two three maybe they're all line liberals their their their their professors who know that this kind of intellectual oppression does not fit with liberal ideals. In many of the most eloquent condemnations and descriptions of what's Happening come from people that you can only describe as old-line liberals. I'm thinking of Bill Luxembourg speech before the American historical Association 1991, which he found it necessary to say. I find totally repugnant any effort to impose favorite orthodoxies on the classroom or James David Barber. I am sure that James David Barber at Duke and I never voted for the same presidential candidate, but on this issue we are exactly aligned He wrote what is going on in universities now threatens everything that a university is supposed to be about students minds are supposed to be trained not converted politically. So there are so many fine professors. I think we need to make that clear for the public at large but there are also many many people on our campuses and I don't mean to beat up on the humanities but it is particularly true in the humanities who see social transformation political transformation as a perfectly proper goal in the classroom. Now, whether they're effective in achieving their goal is something we could debate it students are very resilient. I just find it so uplifting to be around students and I don't find that their their stole their souls are stolen very easily. I came across a joke not long ago. One male student was asking another male student. How do you get a good grade in a feminist classroom? And the second male student said the first it is really easy. He said you just go in pretending that you are a male chauvinist Pig and then halfway through the course. You have a conversion. He said it's good for an a every time. So I think I think some students are some students are really affected by this but I think others aren't but as I mentioned before they become a little cynical about the process and moreover think what they miss. They missed that free exchange of ideas. They missed that open and free debate that has always been at the heart of what liberal education is and it should be now is that it's the single most important experience in a politicized classroom. The students don't have that experience. Well, it makes a great deal of difference to our institutions of higher education whether or not truth is perceived as the goal of Education. As I said that the idea want to explore in the book I'm working on is about how it makes a difference in the society as a whole as well. I look at museums museums have become a place where you can see the same phenomenon occurring what you see is a complete lack of pretense. That one should be objective a complete discounting of the idea of objectivity a complete discounting of the idea of Truth what you see are Exhibits that make a political point one. Very famous One in Washington DC. It's been I guess two years now. The West is America presenting the whole story of Westward Expansion and all of the art that illustrates the story of western expansion as a story of racism and sexism. And certainly there was some of that and if we told the story differently if we excluded that in the past, we were wrong to paint too romantic a picture but the picture being painted now is every bit as wrong having grown up in the west and being being well aware of what the lives of women in the west were like by listening to my my grandmother and my aunt, you know, I know it was very hard and I know that woman's lot was not an easy one, but there was also something about moving to the West that was liberating. You if you read these accounts, there's my favorite is letters of a woman Homesteader that recounts living in Southern Wyoming in the early part of the 20th century the early part of the 20th century in Southern Wyoming was not like living in Pennsylvania or New York in the early part of the 20th century. It was very very primitive children died couldn't get medical care. It was very hard. But these women would go camping together know they would go out and Hunt together women in the East weren't doing that women of the East were still riding sidesaddle. It was very very liberating. If you look at where women first voted you see it was in the West Where they were 4 where they first one suffrage it was in the west. So there's another side of the story but we didn't tell it in that museum exhibition. There was another one of the Smithsonian Lynn months and I went to this one called etiquette of the undercast. This one was particularly irritating because it made this point again that no matter how hard you work in a society aren't going to get any place. It made fun of people who flip hamburgers that that's what you do for chump change. That's what fools do people who really any reason for self-respect would not start at the bottom ladder and try to work their way up at least according to Etiquette of the undercast. This was a rather amazing exhibition only with lens of persuasion. Did I go because in order to enter the exhibition you had to lie down in a morgue drawer and get get pushed into it. This was not an exhibition that pretended in any way to be objective. And I don't know how many of you been in New York recently. But if you have a chance to go go see the Whitney biennial it is completely astonishing again. It is the notion that we are the most racist sexist country that has ever existed and that it's almost hopeless to try to see any way in which will get ourselves out of this problem at the biennial I was looking at well, you might call it a painting though. I don't think the artist herself would have called it that but I was looking at it sort of trying to understand it. I took a step sideways and the guard said watch out Miss you're going to step in the exhibit going to step in the exhibit. I look down in this particular exhibit was about a 4-foot wide pool of vomit. A mixed-media puddle of vomit it was a commentary on women and bulimia this at the Whitney Museum of American art now this this is not this is does not pretend to be an objective. Look at our culture is a politicized look at our culture these ideas effect museums. I can tell you about schools. I'm sure that you all probably know that too. You don't even have to look at at culture education. Look at Oliver Stone's JFK complete example of freeing history from any notion that there is truth instead you tell the story of the past in order to in order to make a political point. So it's off campus as well as on at the view is gaining currency that reality is nothing more than different perspectives Advanced by different people in order to promote their interests. And there is a view of this development is it that it's inevitable. I mean that is sort of the characteristic of our time some people argue. It is happening. It is going to happen. There's nothing you or I can do to stop it. And so we might just as well go with the flow we might as well just enjoy it. This is the thesis that was advanced in an article that's been very very much quoted it appeared in Rolling Stone by a man named John cats. The author of the article was mr. Katz. He made this point by distinguishing between the old news which is the news that tries to be objective the news that tries to give you a spectrum of opinion and the News which makes no attempt at objectivity. This was his conclusion consumers can have a balanced discussion with every side of an issue of neutralizing the other or they can turn to singers producers and filmmakers offering colorful distinctive often flawed, but frequently more powerful visions of their truth more and more Americans are making it clear which they prefer. So there's this one side that says, you know, just relax just go along with it. There is the other view though that this is an entirely dangerous development for democracy that if we don't hold fast to the idea that there is a truth out there that we can all share. We don't hold fast to the idea that there are standards out there and all of that involves assuming there is a truth that we can use to adjudicate our differences that we as a nation are in real trouble. One of the best in succinct is statements of this is from An anthropologist named Marvin Harris who writes that that we need to reaffirm the idea that there is truth that there are truths that we can all agree to the alternative. He writes is to stand by helplessly as special interest groups tear the United States apart in the name of their separate realities or to wait until one of them grow strong enough to force its own irrational and subjective brand of reality on all the rest. Well, I I happen to be of the Harris School of thought I think this is a cause for real concern and I feel this most especially when I visit with Scholars and other countries and I've been very fortunate to have the opportunity to visit with Scholars from countries that are just emerging from ideological control of the University. If you talk to scholars in Eastern Europe, for example who have just come through a time when Marxist ideology dominated the entire system of education and the universities as well. They find it incredible in the most basic sense of that word that we would be turning to a time where we will suppress opinion where we will suppress the expression where we will allow an Orthodoxy to be imposed on our our universities. One of the most impressive men I have met most impressive people. I've met in talking to Eastern European Educators the man in rotting Paulo's who's now the Rector of Charles University in Prague. He has two phds. He got his first PhD in philosophy, but quickly discovered that he could not teach that he had to pay too much. He too much obedience to Marxist theories. It was impossible. So we went back and got another PhD this one in chemistry and he said he thought maybe there would be no Marxist take on sulfuric acid. It turned out he was not quite right that there was a Marxist take on everything and he certainly couldn't have expressed his opinion freely even with a PhD in chemistry. He was kicked out of the university and spent many years working as a coal stoker. It's amazing how many of these people worked as coal Stoker's know they fed furnaces and I asked Paul who's why this was so because I did encountered some and he said, well, you know, it's one of those things you could shovel of coal and then you could read for a while and you can shovel some more coal in and read for a while longer, but can you imagine because of his ideology having to leave the university and And being put to work doing doing manual labor. He is a such an impressive man. I asked him to to talk to me about the role of the role of a university in a democracy. He said the role of the university is the quote is to educate in a sense that Plato talked about to draw students out from the dark to the light to move from closure to openness to an understanding of the truth, which is something that cannot be changed. And I observed I couldn't help but observe that there are many on University campuses in the United States hold a different view argue that the truth doesn't exist. That only perspectives do To which he responded? To be educated. We must understand the truth. And that means literally to stand under it. It is above us not we above it. Well, of course, his words have a particular eloquent since he is paid such a high price for living by them. But I think all of us know that not living by them carries a high price as well having some old ideas to fit prescribed ideologies is demeaning to individuals. It's damaging to societies. Being able to pursue the truth on the other hand to pursue the truth wherever it may lead is one of the blessings of liberty. Thank you very much.