“Two incompatible sacred values in American universities” Jon Haidt, Hayek Lecture Series
On October 6, 2016, Professor Jonathan Haidt gave a Hayek Lecture at Duke. The event was co-sponsored by the programs in the History of Political Economy (HOPE), Philosophy, Politics, & Economics (PPE), and American Values and Institutions (AVI). The event was open to the public, but also served as a guest lecture in Professor Jonathan Anomaly’s PPE course.
Professor Haidt argues that conflicts arise at many American universities today because they are pursuing two potentially incompatible goals: truth and social justice. While Haidt thinks both goals are important, he maintains that they can come into conflict.
According to some versions of social justice, whenever we observe a disparity of outcomes between races, genders, or other groups, we should infer that injustice has been done. Haidt challenges this view of social justice and shows how it sometimes leads to violations of truth, and even justice.
Haidt concludes that universities should be free to pursue whatever goals – truth or social justice – they want, but that they should make it clear which of these two goals is their “telos” – their highest purpose. He ends with a discussion of his initiative, HeterodoxAcademy.org, to bring more viewpoint diversity to universities in order to improve research and learning.
…Haidt used two quotes to exemplify the opposing perspectives, the first from liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill.
“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion…
… he must know them (opposing opinions) in their most plausible and persuasive form.”
– John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
This quote reflects a liberal arts perspective. One that considers the discovery of truth as primary and is more concerned with accuracy than what’s to be done with the findings.
Embedded in this spirit of curious humility is a belief that objective reality exists and is accessible to all inquiring minds as long as they’re willing and able to overcome their subjective biases.
We recognize research conducted in this Millian disposition as scientific, with rigorous empirical methods, the development of testable hypotheses, and systematic observation, all being reflections of a striving toward the reduction of subjective bias.
Haidt contrasts this Millian perspective with that of Karl Marx, the father of communism, who was notoriously pragmatic in his pursuit of revolution.
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.”
– Karl Marx, Eleven Theses on Feuerbach
This quote reveals an activist’s disposition that regards the effect of thought as its primary purpose. Embedded in this perspective is an eagerness to impose one’s will on the world and it would likely give rise to an eye roll if confronted with Millian appeals to dispassionate analysis….
Dangerous people are filling the heads of young people with dangerous nonsense. Who are these people? They are what Jordan Peterson calls “the post-modernists:” neo-Marxist professors who dominate our colleges and universities. And here’s the worst part: we are financing these nihilists with tax dollars, alumni gifts and tuition payments. Time to wise up.
TODAY’S PROFESSORS DON’T TEACH, THEY INDOCTRINATE PROGRESSIVISM
[….]
To understand and oppose the post-modernists, the ideas by which they orient themselves must be clearly identified.
First is their new unholy trinity of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Diversity is defined not by opinion, but by race, ethnicity or sexual identity; the goal is no longer equality of opportunity, but an insistence on equality of outcome; and inclusion is the use of identity-based quotas to attain this misconceived state of equity.
All the traditional rights of the West are to be considered secondary to these new values. Take, for example, freedom of speech—the very pillar of democracy. The post-modernists refuse to believe that people of good will can exchange ideas and reach consensus.
Their world is instead a Hobbesian nightmare of identity groups warring for power. They don’t see ideas that run contrary to their ideology as merely incorrect. They see them as integral to the oppressive system they wish to supplant and consider it a moral obligation to stifle and constrain their expression.
Second is a rejection of the free market—of the very idea that free, voluntary trading benefits everyone. These rejectionists won’t acknowledge that capitalism has lifted up hundreds of millions of people so they can for the first time in history afford food, shelter, clothing, transportation—even entertainment and travel. Those classified as low-income in the US (and, increasingly, everywhere else) are able to meet their basic needs. Meanwhile, in once-prosperous Venezuela—until recently the poster-child of the campus radicals—the middle-class lines up for toilet paper.
Third, and finally, are the politics of identity. Post-modernists don’t believe in individuals. You’re an exemplar of your race, sex, or sexual preference. You’re also either a victim or an oppressor. No wrong can be done by anyone in the former group, and no good by the latter. Such ideas of victimization do nothing but justify the use of power and engender intergroup conflict.
All these concepts originated with Karl Marx, the 19th-century German philosopher. Marx viewed the world as a gigantic class struggle—the bourgeoisie against the proletariat; the grasping rich against the desperately poor. But wherever his ideas were put into practice—in the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, and Cambodia, to name just a few—whole economies failed, and tens of millions were killed. We fought a decades-long cold war to stop the spread of those murderous notions. But they’re back, in the new guise of identity politics.
The corrupt ideas of the post-modern neo-Marxists should be consigned to the dustbin of history. Instead, we underwrite their continuance in the very institutions where the central ideas of the West should be transmitted across the generations. Unless we stop, post-modernism will do to America and the entire Western world what it’s already done to its universities.
The students would tell Professor Laura Freberg after finding out she was a Republican that they could tell. It was because of what she WAS NOT SAYING.
To wit:
My oldest son’s English professor at C.O.C. talked positively about Bernie Sanders as well as socialism, how Republicans were bigoted, talked approvingly of #BlackLivesMatter, about how religion causes most wars, talked about global warming, the [fictitious] plastic trash island, on-and-on-and-on. He barely taught English.
During the comments about Christianity being behind many of histories wars, my son spoke up and mentioned that only 7% of the world’s wars were religious, and almost a third of them were done in the name of Muhammad (HJBUH). The professor countered… since they have WI-FI on campus, my son pulled up my post on it to clarify the issue (“Causes of Wars“).
Mind you, in the post I quote from an atheist professor, an encyclopedia written by 9-history professors, and another book by a religious author specifically about the Thirty Years War (he is Professor of Theology at DePaul University; his book was published by Oxford University Press).
The next class was an entire class on why you cannot trust books.
CRAZY!
If I were there, I would note that I agree with him in regards to history books written without footnotes, like Howard Zinn’s book about American history (which I would guess is a book the “professor” emphatically trusts).
My only admonition to the professors like my son’s is that if you put this passion into the material and class goals, you would be an excellent teacher of minds in that subject.
Here is the viewable or downloadable version of the letter replicated below in PDF FORM
This is a quick intro [in the green box] of this long letter I sent to both the principle and the teacher. (Other letters went to students in sealed envelopes to give to their parents.)
This is in response to a Saugus teacher verbally announcing that a position taken by my son, or by multiple people in the classroom (which included my son), was racist. This is my response.
A quick note from a concerned parent,
During conversation on hot topic issues, which I do not mind in the least, the conversation of immigration came up in the classroom. I wish to address this particular point of the interaction between my son and the teacher, not to bemoan the teacher — although this is worthy of it — but to inspire more fruitful response in the future and better class management.
Firstly, before the “operation” (often which are painful), I wish to administer some anesthesia.
I realize first and foremost that the teacher (in the broad sense) is only human, and may have some days that are not “on the mark” and others where they have had a day “gone perfectly.” Life in and outside the classroom can be demanding. Mistakes will be made and there should be understanding in regards to this. I expect missteps from the people that work for me, and I expect I will misstep in my duties at my job. The challenge is — of course — to learn from them.
Likewise, when a seventeen-year-old talks about immigration, it is a subject they most likely know little about, and in-between homework, XBOX, and eating/sleeping, and friendships as well as family events, this 17-year old may pick up bits and pieces of his older brother and I talking about these macroissues. And in his adolescent mind latch onto (wrongly or rightly) a portion and “run with it,” mischaracterizing the issue. It happens with 17-year olds. (I do wish to note that I realize my son can be strongly argumentative, and taking a position strongly with the barest of knowledge. I acknowledge this and only wish the best for the teachers that encounter this aspect of my son. I tell him often he should become a lawyer.)
So when his brother and I discuss, say, that Hispanic/Latino groups who themselves stand against illegal immigration and write about the deleterious effects on their pay rate and the lowered standard of living they face by illegal immigration by standing in line and following all the rules in order to get into this great nation to better their lives and their families lives. My youngest son may have heard his brother and I talk about past immigrants (an older generation) who tell stories about how they or their parents came to the country not being able to speak a lick of English but teaching themselves quickly in order to succeed in the country. They speak of not being able to read in their native tongue and so “forced” to enculturate[1] themselves into the American culture, which is summed up on our coins, ” E Pluribus Unum.” Roughly,” out of many, one.”
Now, I am sure my youngest son would agree with the above positions. But I have a feeling he latched onto the part about listening to immigrants themselves talk about this generation of immigrants talking about how by learning the English language and all the interactions it took to do so, they were enculturated. You know, maybe we should take a break hereand I will share my interpretation a bit about that word, “encuturate,” by me sharing some definitions offered in my seminary classes, taken from a paper or two I wrote. Bear with me a bit… I only write this much for clarity’s sake.
a. – Cultural Anthropology in “missionology” is very important to understand. One author hints at a definition when he says it is “attention to systems of ideas and symbols”,[2] it helps the missionary to “understand the purposes of and differences in the various cultures of the world”[3] in assisting the missionary in understand what the process of cultural differences is about. This process or study of culture is what is called “cultural anthropology.”[4] A refusal to implement this cross-cultural study can cause a failure in the Gospel being communicated successfully by trying to impose one’s own culture on another culture.[5]
[….]
Enculturation “is the process whereby an established culture teaches an individual by repetition its accepted norms and values, so that the individual can become an accepted member of the society and find his or her suitable role. Most importantly, it establishes a context of boundaries and correctness that dictates what is and is not permissible within that society’s framework.” This is the best definition I have found yet.[6]
[….]
Acculturation is key for the missionary to approach a different culture “as a child”[7] in order to learn (become accultured) become accepted by the culture the missionary has gone to.
[….]
In the West not self-disclosing parts of your inner-self seems unhealthy. But some cultures do not view self-disclosure as all that healthy. The missionary needs to be able to respond to these differences and understand them. Also, self-disclosure is usually precipitated by friendship, not weekly meetings.
self-disclosure n. the act of revealing information about one’s self, especially one’s PRIVATE SELF, to other people. In psychotherapy, the revelation and expression by the client of personal, innermost feelings, fantasies, experiences, and aspirations is believed by many to be a requisite for therapeutic change and personal growth. In addition, pertinent revelation by the therapist of his or her personal details to the client can—if used with discretion—be a valuable tool to increase rapport and earn the trust of the client.[8]
[….]
“A bicultural approach simply extends the range of potential situations that can serve as behavior settings for the target skills being taught.”[9] The idea of the “bridge” is the ability of the missionary to somewhat leave his first culture to be able to communicate well in the second culture. It is a “set of relationships between people from two culture[s]… [making in a sense] a new culture.”[10] Mainly it is setting up a community through relationships where the mature missionary can connect on a cultural level.
So you can see, for conversation sake, that I know a bit more about cultural differences and similarities and how to merge the two into a working society than many parents (maybe) from Saugus. This is not to toot my horn, but as we transition to the tougher topics, I wanted you both (or whomever is reading this) to understand a bit of where I come from.
Okay, “they were enculturated,” picking back up where we left off. These same people with personal stories from their parents or themselves, talked about how they were forced into our culture. Nowadays, with emphasis on “from many, many” (“E pluribus, pluribus,” celebrating every cultural difference and teaching a distorted view of multi-culturalism [I have taken some accelerated courses for a master’s in education for a friend, I know that which I speak]) we find Classrooms geared towards the native tongue, ballots and signs and other ways of communicating in the native languages of the peoples homeland that slow this enculturation process down. You have now, for instance, a whole generation that both a) cannot speak in our cultures tongue, or b) they do not feel the need to. This is sad. This is a “value” of Europe,” and not ours, historically speaking. Ballots, road signs, and more were always in English, and in order to vote well one had to learn the language which also thrust the new voter into the culture of America. He took that or another topic and in a small sound-bite in a classroom environment probably did not express what he believed well.
Or discussions in our home of the very provable impact on the health system from this very large population that raises health costs and options on legal immigrants and their families.
Now, as I discuss these issues with my boys, I realize that they will take away from these brief interactions aspects that they either misunderstood, miss-emphasized, and the like. Even though I may have clearly annunciated my viewpoint, these are still young minds I am dealing with.Whatever the conversation in the classroom is that stems from the home environment, know that a young person will probably not explain it as well as I would or the teacher might, or the student wished he had.
Which brings me to my main issue. As a teacher, after having such a conversation where kids may have not presented what they thought or have learned from home well (again: XBOX, eating, sleeping homework, friends, and the like), they should not hear from their teacher that these positions are racist. Even in jest. BECAUSE, being that a classroom is full of these “muddled” minds, some may take this as a queue from their teacher that someone in the classroom IS racist or holds to racist positions. Again, because of our recent political election and how the word is thrown around in common vernacular, let us look into what this word means. And it is interesting because I just received a review copy of the book from North Carolina University Press, Chapill Hill, the book, Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. This book, among the many others I have read over the years, goes to great lengths to properly define racism. A word too often thrown around.
Webster’s says this: a. belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule others.
So we see that Webster’s main definition (and the one’s that follow) are based on a belief in a genetic superiority of one ethnicity (falsely called race) over another. A more in-depth definition comes from Safire’s Political Dictionary, and reads (in-part):
racism Originally, an assumption that an individual’s abilities and potential were determined by his biological race, and that some races were inherently superior to others; now, a political-diplomatic accusation of harboring or practicing such theories.
“This word [racism],” wrote Harvard Professor J. Anton De Haas in November 1938, “has come into use the last six months, both in Europe and this country… Since so much has been said about conflicting isms, it is only natural that a form was chosen which suggested some kind of undesirable character.” In fact, racism came into use two years earlier, in his 1936 book The Coming American Fascism, Lawrence Dennis wrote, “If … it be assumed that one of our values should be a type of racism which excludes certain races from citizenship, then the plan of execution should provide for the annihilation, deportation, or sterilization of the excluded races.”
Racism, a shortening of racialism, was at first directed against Jews. In the nineteenth century, anti-Semites who foresaw a secular age in which religion might not be such a popular rallying force against Jews put forward the idea of Jewishness being less a religion than a race. Adolf Hitler, with his “master race” ideology, turned theory into savage practice….
Note also that the above started to get into what Hitler thought. Evolutionary thinking at the time was that mankind evolved in three separate groups, in differing local on our planet. The Caucasoid, the Negroid, and the Mongoloid “races.” This teaching (espoused from higher learning to high-schools) went a long way in fortifying this thinking:
“The stronger must dominate and not mate with the weaker, which would signify the sacrifice of its own higher nature. Only the born weakling can look upon this principle as cruel, and if he does so it is merely because he is of a feebler nature and narrower mind; for if such a law [natural selection] did not direct the process of evolution then the higher development of organic life would not be conceivable at all…. If Nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with the stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one; because in such a case all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile.”[11]
I think a better word to use (but I do not even think this word applicable to the conversation), since very few today are racists — i.e., believe in the genetic superiority of one race over another — would be “prejudice.”
which Webster’s defines as: an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason.
Now, my son has heard the mainstream meaning and response to our immigration issue from me, from immigrants, and from conservative leaders like Marco Rubio. But these are only in passing. So, while he may even have seemed prejudiced in his repeating of what he latched onto (rightly or wrongly), he was merely being a teenager. As such, should get the grace and understanding that is involved in being such. Maybe even a verbal reinforcement that they may not be addressing the issue as well as they would wish, leading to good in class management.
[SIDE-NOTE: even if presented with a truly racist event in the classroom, much like certain t-shirts not being allowed on campus do to the inflammatory nature that can cause young people to react to it emotionally… so to is it the teachers responsibility to diffuse the situation so that outside the classroom there is less of a chance that issues will be dealt with by young, emotionally driven persons versus reasoning adults. In this case I think the opposite happened.]
Being a person of faith, I will share my personal beliefs and history to make clear my position before going further. I was born and raised in Detroit. the neighborhood I grew up in was almost all black. I was the proverbial “white friend.” All my friends and buddies were black. I have a black grandmother and (obviously then) cousins and the like. So my background is full of people I love from a differing ethnicity.
Also, my theology informs me as well.
In Numbers, chapter 12, we read about Moses marrying a “Cushite” woman (Cushite’s were the early tribal members that founded Ethiopia). So a Hebrew was marrying an Ethiopian. Miriam, Moses sister, spoke out against this interracial marriage and she was struck with a form of disease that turned her skin “ashen.” God only took that curse away till she repented of her sin and recognized what God had already blessed.
I would also be called a “fundamentalist,” in that my personal belief is of a young age of the earth. Now, you may not agree with this position, that is more than understandable. But holding to a position one agrees with or disagrees with does not say anything about whether or not such a position has in it positive or negative societal aspects. So, for instance, what is not often realized about “young earthers” by those who do not study worldviews is that we hold to an aspect of mankind that is the least racial. In other words, the Bible says in Acts 17:26 states: “And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.” We view Genesis and the Hebrew word for “clay” that God used to make man from to mean “red earth” (literally, “red clay” in the Hebrew), which supports the many creations stories from all over the world that mentions the first man and woman being “red” in color. And that much like the genetics in eye-color, the genes turning on and off our cells that produce color/melatonin give us our small differences. Fundamentalists believe that over time culture and familiarity caused people to seek after “like minded” [culture] or “looking” [familiarity] persons. And that as we [mankind] traveled this globe, environment dictated places where one could survive and others not (darker ethnicities by the equator, lighter away from).
So, while I am sure some scoff at the “fundamentalist” ideals I hold to, and talk over with my kids, You can see that from my history and faith I would be the least racial (as well as my kids) in a situation that required a teacher to say “that is enough of the racist comments” in class, after my son struggled to make his point.
Now we enter into an example of a modern day racist to make the point (a non-important point really, but one I feel needs to be hashed out). This is from a recent conversation challenging the use of the word “racist” in dialogue with friends and family in this very political environment. This was in response to a friend saying Karl Rove was racist. And while he [Rove] is not part of the conversation, my response is… because if the teacher is a Democrat that has very liberal biases and see’s her classroom as a place to express these views, then she needs to answer me about the following…
… and let me say something. I have lived a full life, from a drop-out from Bowman Nights at Saugus, to a three-time felon, to a father and husband to a degreed “theologian.” I have accumulated over 5,000 books in my home library, have written a book, and have passions in regards to comparative religious views and philosophies (current and past). I study history, science, philosophy, economics, current affairs, political science, theology, education, world religions, cults and the occult, and more.
I hate racism, and talk to people a lot about changing their life from this muddled thinking to one that is on a firm foundation. What is below should scare the normal individual who would surely be the harbinger of such warnings if a Republican held to these beliefs (as would I). But if one dismisses the following, then that merely speaks to his or her dogmatic views viewed through their rose colored lenses.
[…..]
… our current President went to a church for twenty years that sold anti-Semitic/racist sermons in their bookstore by Louise Farrakhan during the entire time he attended. Farrakhan believes in the genetic superiority of the black race over others. They put him [Farrakhan] on the cover of the church’s magazine (that is mailed to about 20,000 people’s homes) three times and invited him INTO church to award him a “lifetime achievement award.” A man who teaches that the white man was created 6,600 years ago on the Island of Cyprus, thus bringing all evil into the world (via the white man).
Side-Note: They also put on the cover once Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam… who said:
“…they are a prey in the hands of the white race, the world’s archdeceivers (the real devils in person). You are made to believe that you worship the true God, but you do not! God is unknown to you in that which the white race teaches you (a mystery God). The great archdeceivers (the white race) were taught by their father, Yakub, 6,000 years ago, how to teach that God is a spirit (spook) and not a man. In the grafting of his people (the white race), Mr. Yakub taught his people to contend with us over the reality of God by asking us of the whereabouts of that first One (God) who created the heavens and the earth, and that, Yakub said, we cannot do.”
Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman In America, p. 9
“White religionists are not capable of perceiving the blackness of God, because their satanic whiteness is a denial of the very essence of divinity. That is why whites are finding and will continue to find the black experience a disturbing reality.” quoted from James Cone’s book, A Black Theology of Liberation, page 64.
This is eerily similar to Hitlers own writing:
“The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew” ~ Adolf Hitler – Mein Kampf
This author was regularly pushed by Reverend Wright (who himself was a former Nation of Islam minister) on TV appearances, like this one: YOUTUBE (link set to start at main-point)
Pictures of Michelle Obama hanging out with Farrakhan’s wife, also a racist anti-Semite.
Not to mention that recently “A former top deputy to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan tells Newsmax that Barack Obama’s ties to the black nationalist movement in Chicago run deep, and that for many years the two men have had “an open line between them” to discuss policy and strategy, either directly or through intermediaries.”
Yet you feel it necessary to forgo the righteous indignation of these facts and say that (out of the blue) Rove is racist? Why is he? Did he attend a racist church for twenty years? If Bush attended a church like that (with roles reversed, inviting in “David Dukes” for awards and the like — Christian Identity teaches that the Jew was created when Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden… having sexual relations with the serpent [the Devil] and birthing out the “evil” Jews… not too dissimilar to Obama’s buddy), heck, I would lock arms with you on getting this guy out of office, assuming the media would even allow him into office in the first place.
Apply to your side what you would expect others to apply to theirs.
Thank you for your time and patience, SeanG
FOOTNOTES
[1] A definition for conversational clarity is coming up.
[2] Paul G. Hierbert, Anthropological Insights for Missionaries (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1985), 21.
[3] Ray Arnold, The Missionary In Culture (Tacoma, WA: Faith Seminary Publishing House, 1995), 2.
[4] Idid.
[5] Ralph D. Winter & Steven C. Hawthorn, eds., Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: A Reader (Pasedena, CA: William Carey Library, 1981) 517.
[6] WIKIPEDIA (last accessed 7-18-08), cf., enculturation.
[7] Ray Arnold, The Missionary In Culture (Tacoma, WA: Faith Seminary Publishing House, 1995), 6.
[8] Gary R. VandenBos, ed., APA Dictionary of Psychology (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2007), cf. self-disclosure, 829.
[9] Adrian Furnham & Stephen Bochner, Culture Shock: Psychological Reactions to Unfamiliar Environments (New York, NY: Methuen & Co., 1986), 240-241.
[10] Ralph D. Winter & Steven C. Hawthorn, eds., Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: A Reader (Pasedena, CA: William Carey Library, 1981) 381.
[11] Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, translator/annotator, James Murphy [New York: Hurst and Blackett, 1942], pp. 161-162.
BONUS MATERIALS
An important documentary about this in higher education can be found here on this very same topic:
