We Must Think Again

And Defend Higher Education

The scope and brutishness of the Trump Administration assault on American higher education is unprecedented in our nation’s history. If we’re to have any chance of actually making America great again — let alone resuming a sense of national unity and purpose — e pluribus unum and all of that — this assault must be stopped.

Assaults on higher learning and ‘free thinking’ have occurred regularly since before our nation’s founding. Even as immigrants flooded into our brave new world fleeing oppression and seeking liberty, our strongest suit was never tolerance of ethnic, religious, moral, and political differences.

America was colonized by ‘sects’ of many, many varieties all of which sought sovereignty over their own domains of thought and action — and sought to expand these and impose them more broadly. It took centuries to forge these into a single nation — and we’re still working on the substance of that.

Universal education was conceived, in no small part, as a way to build some commonality and community among these disparate ‘colonies’ of heritage and belief. But education therefore has also become a major arena of contention, especially among those still determined to further colonize the rest of us with their beliefs.

Despite this, education in the US is pretty amazing. It’s highly developed and desirable because it’s very diverse and therefore serves a wide array of people, communities, companies, sects, and just about every other interest, entity, and aspiration.

• There are great and not-so-great research universities and colleges the missions of which revolve around exploring and expanding the frontiers of knowledge.

• There are many such institutions that primarily teach to a form of ‘default’ liberal arts and/or ‘gentleman’s B’ learning.

• There are many educational institutions (some of them ‘community colleges’)that also serve functions of providing foundations in basic credentialing, knowledge, and development of learning skills.

But, it has always been the case that our basically ‘illiberal,’ conservative country — even civilization — has never been very comfortable with the individuals and institutions among us exploring and expanding the far reaches of knowledge and imagination.

Where I grew up, in a predominantly working class community, ‘egg-heads’ were ‘scary.’ Literally. Nobody wanted to be around them or to even think about them. What people wanted was to have education produce ‘normal’ people who fit-in.

But America has long nurtured those who are able to think ‘outside the box’ — because, well, some people do — and they can be very important contributors to our society, our world, and the future.

And America, too, has long supported an extremely broad phalanx of other educational experiences — far too many to adequately characterize.

And, this is partly why kids and parents spend a lot of time and resources trying to choose the right college/university.

But, here we are conducting another ‘witch-hunt’ targeting the scary ‘out-of-the-box’ thinkers and inventors, which is probably 5% of the total in our educational system.

Why?

Because egg-heads and ‘free-thinkers’ are by definition ‘not normal,’ and are easily mocked and caricatured and branded as deviants, heretics, poisonous, insidious, and on and on. And so over the centuries:

• They must be the reason that there are slaves, non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants, women, Gays, Black Americans . . . getting agitated and no longer know their place.

• They must be the reason that God or China has sent a plague, an earthquake, or critical race theory to punish us for our sins of toleration — nee, coddling — of high-brows.

At times like this, all of this cynical and calculated demonization of ‘free thinkers’ is so predictable, so self-defeating — so unthinking.

Trump apparently believes he can simply stamp out free thinking through sheer autocratic brutishness and intimidation.

Others, even some ‘liberals,’ have now, consciously or not, aligned with the alt-right and Trump. It has become common, using broad brushes, to paint damning portraits of the insidious impacts of supposedly widespread anti-semitism, reverse racism, elitism, wokeness, and other transgressions and machinations of ‘higher learning’ and universities.

Seems like there are many in the market for ‘good people on both sides’ with torches and pitchforks. They are standing back and standing by.

And it needs to stop.

We need to douse the torches, confiscate the pitchforks — and disperse the crowds.

Instead, we need to think again.

We need to out-think the alt-right.

This is a test.

We cannot fail.

A note to readers:

I’ve been writing this newsletter for about 18 months now and it’s a labor of love. But it’s also a project to understand what’s happening and what to do about it.

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Thanks!

Jon