I have little commentary because it speaks for itself, but here is a good piece by George Will on our topic here. He criticizes Stanley Fish for his new book defending the Academy against claims of a vast left-wing conspiracy. I rarely read Fish's blog on the New York Times, but when I do I tend to frown with mild irritation. Based on what I have seen there I suspect Will is right.
Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving to those of you who actually read this!
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Sunday, November 23, 2008
The University President-as-CEO
This article from the 22 November New York Times is a follow up to this one from 17 November.
I am glad to see that some of these bosses of higher learning are tightening their belts a bit, relatively speaking. I only wish that more would. Look, I know that big universities have to attract big leaders, and there are only so many to go around and they must be attracted with big paychecks. It's just the market mentality I have a problem with. When it is taken too far we lose the focus from what education and the Academy should be.
Of course my own alma mater raised some questions when it hired a non-PhD with a high profile. Some faculty members were disappointed that he was not one of their own. Others were troubled that he was offered tenure. At any rate, he wasn't paid as much as some of these guys; instead his monetary criticism came for things like taking time out of the year to serve on a few corporate boards, and to camp out at the Bohemian Grove. For better or worse, he has since moved on.
His predecessor, by the way, apparently turned down a raise from his beloved Washington State. He of course went there for love (it was his alma mater).
University management is an important issue. Obviously it has to exist, but under what form? What should its goals be? I need to learn more before I can really discuss it in depth, but like any bureaucracy it will struggle with misappropriation, waste, red tape, and innumerable human errors.
I am glad to see that some of these bosses of higher learning are tightening their belts a bit, relatively speaking. I only wish that more would. Look, I know that big universities have to attract big leaders, and there are only so many to go around and they must be attracted with big paychecks. It's just the market mentality I have a problem with. When it is taken too far we lose the focus from what education and the Academy should be.
Of course my own alma mater raised some questions when it hired a non-PhD with a high profile. Some faculty members were disappointed that he was not one of their own. Others were troubled that he was offered tenure. At any rate, he wasn't paid as much as some of these guys; instead his monetary criticism came for things like taking time out of the year to serve on a few corporate boards, and to camp out at the Bohemian Grove. For better or worse, he has since moved on.
His predecessor, by the way, apparently turned down a raise from his beloved Washington State. He of course went there for love (it was his alma mater).
University management is an important issue. Obviously it has to exist, but under what form? What should its goals be? I need to learn more before I can really discuss it in depth, but like any bureaucracy it will struggle with misappropriation, waste, red tape, and innumerable human errors.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
An old but relevant article
This is one of David Brooks's early columns for the New York Times, from September 2003. I don't have any comments, it speaks for itself--but you'll see why I keep this blog semi-anonymous, even when I don't see myself as "belonging" especially to either camp.
Monday, November 10, 2008
More regarding biased professors...
A friend sent me this piece from a blog he reads. Apparently the study I referenced in my last post was not actually all that convincing, but the NYTimes reported it anyway. Go figure.
I agree with the author that the danger lies not in an individual biased professor as much as the general environment of academia. Having come from a university with a less liberal environment, I now see what it is like to be at a more typical American university. For example, when I took a class in Intellectual History as an undergraduate, we read Rousseau. We read Marx. But we also read Smith, and Locke (who I think is hard to categorize in today's world), and Burke, and even Wagner's libretti. A good well-rounded class. Then I took a class in political theory that read Machiavelli, Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, Tocqueville, Marx, and Nietzsche. Another good well-rounded class. It drew from both sides and we read them to understand what they said and why they said it. There was very little preaching.
But on arrival here I learned that other people in my own department have not read or even glanced at what I think of as crucial texts in the development of Europe. For example, an individual working on pre-revolutionary France admits to knowing little about Locke, yet the English philosopher influenced many French Enlightenment thinkers. This individual told me that such texts were not assigned in undergraduate classes. This individual also attended a university with a higher profile and higher ranking than my own undergraduate institution. This is troubling.
The popularity of studying marginal figures has hurt the attention given to the classic "big boys." Yet in focusing on those that we retrospectively perceive as neglected, we neglect those who did in fact influence history and essentially create an alternative and incomplete picture. Believe it or not, some figures were perceived as important because they were in fact important.
This quote is from Steven Shapin, a historian of science, in his Social History of Truth (Chicago: U of Chicago press, 1994), p. xxii in the preface:
What a gutsy passage! In other words, we should not be averse to the gentlemen because of current fashion, particularly when, as in Shapin's case, one is discussing something that was dominated by those gentlemen. The ladies will have to get over it.
So to sum up, if the pendulum swings too far in the other direction, it's still wrong. We should not overcorrect the supposed bias of a past generation by imposing biases of our own. But this is what professors in all sorts of fields do today, and try to call it fair and balanced. This has created an environmet that leans heavily in one direction. So that study the NYTimes reports on... well, the majority rules.
I agree with the author that the danger lies not in an individual biased professor as much as the general environment of academia. Having come from a university with a less liberal environment, I now see what it is like to be at a more typical American university. For example, when I took a class in Intellectual History as an undergraduate, we read Rousseau. We read Marx. But we also read Smith, and Locke (who I think is hard to categorize in today's world), and Burke, and even Wagner's libretti. A good well-rounded class. Then I took a class in political theory that read Machiavelli, Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, Tocqueville, Marx, and Nietzsche. Another good well-rounded class. It drew from both sides and we read them to understand what they said and why they said it. There was very little preaching.
But on arrival here I learned that other people in my own department have not read or even glanced at what I think of as crucial texts in the development of Europe. For example, an individual working on pre-revolutionary France admits to knowing little about Locke, yet the English philosopher influenced many French Enlightenment thinkers. This individual told me that such texts were not assigned in undergraduate classes. This individual also attended a university with a higher profile and higher ranking than my own undergraduate institution. This is troubling.
The popularity of studying marginal figures has hurt the attention given to the classic "big boys." Yet in focusing on those that we retrospectively perceive as neglected, we neglect those who did in fact influence history and essentially create an alternative and incomplete picture. Believe it or not, some figures were perceived as important because they were in fact important.
This quote is from Steven Shapin, a historian of science, in his Social History of Truth (Chicago: U of Chicago press, 1994), p. xxii in the preface:
I am both well aware of, and deeply sympathetic towards, the new cultural history of the disenfranchised and the voiceless. That much ought to be apparent from my treatment of support personell in chapter 8 and of women intermittently. Nevertheless, if my basic claim about the significance of the gentle in the formal culture of science is correct, then there need be no apologies for the fact that this is a book about a small group of powerful and vocal actors; that is, as the current sneer has it, about Dead White European Males. Given the nature of the cultural practice in question, if there are past voices--of women, of servants, of savages--in the practice to be attended to and made audible, then there is every reason why historians should, if they choose, concern themselves with them. However, if there are no such voices, or if they are almost inaudible, then the same sensibility should induce historians to attend to the local practices of inclusion and exclusion through which some speak and others are spoken for, some act and others are acted upon. These practices will, by definition, be those implemented and enforced by those who have put their mark upon the cultural form one proposes to interpret. Nor is there any reason to dismiss as 'politically incorrect' the possibility that the legitimacy of gentlemanly practices was locally conceded beyond the bounds of gentlemanly society. If that was so--and it is a matter for inqury to determine--then historians can also, if they want, ask what that legitimacy consisted in and how far it extended.
What a gutsy passage! In other words, we should not be averse to the gentlemen because of current fashion, particularly when, as in Shapin's case, one is discussing something that was dominated by those gentlemen. The ladies will have to get over it.
So to sum up, if the pendulum swings too far in the other direction, it's still wrong. We should not overcorrect the supposed bias of a past generation by imposing biases of our own. But this is what professors in all sorts of fields do today, and try to call it fair and balanced. This has created an environmet that leans heavily in one direction. So that study the NYTimes reports on... well, the majority rules.
Do "liberal" profs influence students?
The NYTimes reported on 2 November that a recent study determined that university professors have little influence on the political views of their students. I can think of several anecdotal bits of evidence against this, but that does not mean that the findings are not generally correct. I do think that many students who are leaning in one or another direction might attach themselves to professors who are already solidly in one camp and are then influenced by them to become more extreme--but this does not mean that little Billy went to college and lost his religion just because he had an atheist professor.
Even so, it troubles me that we need to have this conversation. Professors do not serve their students when they wander tangentially through all the failures of the Bush administration when the class is on, let's say, developmental psychology. As one of the interviewees in the article says, he is there to learn.
This is where professors are at fault then: not for corrupting the minds of their students (or improving them, if you see it that way), but for trying to influence them politically in the classroom. Even if they are ineffective, they still try. They treat the podium as a soap box for their personal views. Whether those views are liberal or conservative, they are unsuitable for the classroom. In such situations I have felt like interrupting and asking that the prof and the groupies wait until after class to have their political fest.
I do not demand some sort of blandly neutral classroom environment, and some subjects will inevitably become more political, or philosophical, or at any rate ideological. If a discussion arises that is relevant to current affairs, excellent. Go for it. Encourage student learning. But in these situations the professor should see himself as a sort of moderator, or guide, and not a leader for a particular camp. When profs, in their perceived position of authority, use that position to forward one viewpoint at the expense of another, the disagreeing students fall victim, again, to the tyranny of the majority.
In other words, the problem is not "liberal" professors: it is blatantly biased professors. Much of the time these happen to be "liberal." I blame the 1960s. But fortunately Marxism has gone out of fashion, and the old dogs are dying out. Give it another decade and things will be different.
Even so, it troubles me that we need to have this conversation. Professors do not serve their students when they wander tangentially through all the failures of the Bush administration when the class is on, let's say, developmental psychology. As one of the interviewees in the article says, he is there to learn.
This is where professors are at fault then: not for corrupting the minds of their students (or improving them, if you see it that way), but for trying to influence them politically in the classroom. Even if they are ineffective, they still try. They treat the podium as a soap box for their personal views. Whether those views are liberal or conservative, they are unsuitable for the classroom. In such situations I have felt like interrupting and asking that the prof and the groupies wait until after class to have their political fest.
I do not demand some sort of blandly neutral classroom environment, and some subjects will inevitably become more political, or philosophical, or at any rate ideological. If a discussion arises that is relevant to current affairs, excellent. Go for it. Encourage student learning. But in these situations the professor should see himself as a sort of moderator, or guide, and not a leader for a particular camp. When profs, in their perceived position of authority, use that position to forward one viewpoint at the expense of another, the disagreeing students fall victim, again, to the tyranny of the majority.
In other words, the problem is not "liberal" professors: it is blatantly biased professors. Much of the time these happen to be "liberal." I blame the 1960s. But fortunately Marxism has gone out of fashion, and the old dogs are dying out. Give it another decade and things will be different.
Friday, November 7, 2008
On teaching and publishing
This is the text of a presentation I gave in one of my classes. We were to discuss the book or books that influenced our decision to enter the field of history. I was not sure how this would be received, but the response was mostly positive, if troubled by the great difficulties faced by a professor in the classroom. Students who do not seem to care about learning are perhaps even more of a problem than the bureaucracy of the Academy. Yet as will be seen, I think that if we are sincere we can make this work towards the best.
***
First off, I have a confession: I am not here just because I want to study and write about history. To use our egotistical terminology, there are “untrained” historians who are perfectly capable of studying on their own, going to public archives, and writing important books. Some may rightly be considered hacks. But others may be quite legitimate and influential. They aren’t in the club, so we look down upon them: but this is like saying that someone is incapable of writing profound theological treatises without formally attending seminary. Maybe I’m an iconoclast, but that’s how I see it.
With that in mind, here are the two books that I see as crucially influential for me. One is a now-classic professional work of history—T. Harry Williams’ 1969 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of infamous Louisiana governor Huey Long. The other is a 2005 publication on the current situation of American universities, Declining by Degrees.
So back to my confession, with a clarification: I do want to study history, but that is secondary. If I had started college with another related major, such as Classics or Political Theory, I could just as well be in a graduate program for another field. I picked history for personal interest, and soon I saw that I wasn’t bad at sharing and writing about it. Last year I did primary source work for the first time and turned it into what I thought was a pretty good senior thesis. But even so, I’d be lying if I said that I’m here because I want to discover lost texts from Early Modern Britain, or prove that Steven Pincus doesn’t get the whole picture of the Glorious Revolution, or otherwise redefine the field. If others want to do that, I wish them the best. But what is to me the most important aspect of all this is undergraduate teaching. We all know the cliché “publish or perish.” If I don’t toss this grad school plan out of intellectual frustration, I’ll write a dissertation, turn it into a book, get hired by whatever university has their British historian die that year, and, ideally, get tenured some time later and live in a small house not too far from campus and raise a family. But these are selfish aspects of what I plan to do, which is something quite different from who I am. Who I am is what defines my ultimate goals in this field.
Declining by Degrees discusses an apparent crisis in American universities, a crisis that would make it more difficult for me to get that tenured position and more likely to be stuck teaching five classes at three institutions at the same time. It addresses quite a few problems that I agree are valid concerns, including the treatment of education as a consumer product, in which students are the customer, professors are the hired labor, and the president is the cigar-smoking CEO. This environment is what I want to fight. I’m just in history because you have to choose your battles. But even though writing and publishing are important, they are not necessarily the most effective means of improving education. Call me an idealist, you wouldn’t be wrong, but I see publishing as lagniappe, and it risks becoming self-indulgent, gaudy embellishment for big egos. Frankly, I don’t want to have everybody lined up outside my house, checking out the flashy curtains. I’d much rather them come to my office hours with questions about why English Protestants were afraid of Catholics in the late Stuart period, and more importantly, why this matters for the study of humanity.
Asking these questions on this level, that of the general American young adult, is of greater importance than writing for other people in the field. But please understand that I am not downplaying the significance of publishing. Evidently not, with this second book on the table.
T. Harry Williams is legendary at LSU, not just for his written legacy but also for teaching. One of the first stories I heard in my old department was about how so many people wanted to take his classes that they would listen to his lectures from out in the hall, even though they were not enrolled. People wanted to learn from this guy. He got undergraduates excited about learning, undergraduates who had no intention of becoming historians themselves. He made it matter. Or, better put, he helped people to see that it matters, to see that knowing about history can be intrinsically edifying for the individual. But he died in 1979. I wonder how he would do today. Would people still line up in the hall, hoping to hear snippets of a class they weren’t even taking? Somehow I doubt it. This is where Declining by Degrees really hits home. My high school emphasized the intrinsic value of education—which should be a lifelong process—as part of the formation of the individual; but now it is a means to an end, a tool to get a better-paying job. The system has not countered this cultural trend. This book maintains that students then get what they want through grade inflation, while profs turn to what the universities tell them to do: the old adage again, publish or perish. If one is really writing things that are useful, like Huey Long here, that’s great. But publishing a book just to get tenure or fluff out a C.V. is a disservice to everyone. Libraries will buy it because it seems “scholarly,” others in your field will read it because they feel like they should, everybody will scratch one another’s backs through wasted time and money, and then the undergrad who didn’t really learn anything but instead memorized his notes to get his credits, graduate, and go into marketing is the one who missed out. One day he’ll say, upon hearing someone mention the Versailles Treaty at a cocktail party, “Oh, yeah, I heard about that once.” But when prompted he won’t be able to say anything else.
T. Harry did better than this. He certainly published, but he could work both fields. His research entered the classroom. The classroom then entered his research. It all worked together. I don’t mean to deprecate historians today—I think that very many do manage to incorporate the two, with nods to any faculty who may be with us—but it’s something we should actively think about. And think about before we become TA’s next year. Perhaps the system is at a point now where the professor has to work extra hard to achieve this ideal. If so, then it is worth it to fight back and talk to people outside our field, people without advanced degrees. And this should not require dumbing down anything—universities should keep expectations and standards high, or raise them from their current mediocrity. I firmly believe that people can rise to high standards, even if our cultural environment makes it seem like students just don’t care. We can’t lower the bar just so everybody can reach it; then nobody will imagine a world where the bar might be higher. We can’t focus on those few who already seem to care, or who want to go to grad school in our field, and give the rest up for lost. Instead we have to reach out and help all students rise, but at the same time, with no delusions of grandeur based on the letters that will follow our names. We have to remember that we are here to serve. The Academy should not be a haven for the selfish. It should offer the betterment of individuals and, by extension, society. This is education. It is up to us to save it. Thank you.
***
First off, I have a confession: I am not here just because I want to study and write about history. To use our egotistical terminology, there are “untrained” historians who are perfectly capable of studying on their own, going to public archives, and writing important books. Some may rightly be considered hacks. But others may be quite legitimate and influential. They aren’t in the club, so we look down upon them: but this is like saying that someone is incapable of writing profound theological treatises without formally attending seminary. Maybe I’m an iconoclast, but that’s how I see it.
With that in mind, here are the two books that I see as crucially influential for me. One is a now-classic professional work of history—T. Harry Williams’ 1969 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of infamous Louisiana governor Huey Long. The other is a 2005 publication on the current situation of American universities, Declining by Degrees.
So back to my confession, with a clarification: I do want to study history, but that is secondary. If I had started college with another related major, such as Classics or Political Theory, I could just as well be in a graduate program for another field. I picked history for personal interest, and soon I saw that I wasn’t bad at sharing and writing about it. Last year I did primary source work for the first time and turned it into what I thought was a pretty good senior thesis. But even so, I’d be lying if I said that I’m here because I want to discover lost texts from Early Modern Britain, or prove that Steven Pincus doesn’t get the whole picture of the Glorious Revolution, or otherwise redefine the field. If others want to do that, I wish them the best. But what is to me the most important aspect of all this is undergraduate teaching. We all know the cliché “publish or perish.” If I don’t toss this grad school plan out of intellectual frustration, I’ll write a dissertation, turn it into a book, get hired by whatever university has their British historian die that year, and, ideally, get tenured some time later and live in a small house not too far from campus and raise a family. But these are selfish aspects of what I plan to do, which is something quite different from who I am. Who I am is what defines my ultimate goals in this field.
Declining by Degrees discusses an apparent crisis in American universities, a crisis that would make it more difficult for me to get that tenured position and more likely to be stuck teaching five classes at three institutions at the same time. It addresses quite a few problems that I agree are valid concerns, including the treatment of education as a consumer product, in which students are the customer, professors are the hired labor, and the president is the cigar-smoking CEO. This environment is what I want to fight. I’m just in history because you have to choose your battles. But even though writing and publishing are important, they are not necessarily the most effective means of improving education. Call me an idealist, you wouldn’t be wrong, but I see publishing as lagniappe, and it risks becoming self-indulgent, gaudy embellishment for big egos. Frankly, I don’t want to have everybody lined up outside my house, checking out the flashy curtains. I’d much rather them come to my office hours with questions about why English Protestants were afraid of Catholics in the late Stuart period, and more importantly, why this matters for the study of humanity.
Asking these questions on this level, that of the general American young adult, is of greater importance than writing for other people in the field. But please understand that I am not downplaying the significance of publishing. Evidently not, with this second book on the table.
T. Harry Williams is legendary at LSU, not just for his written legacy but also for teaching. One of the first stories I heard in my old department was about how so many people wanted to take his classes that they would listen to his lectures from out in the hall, even though they were not enrolled. People wanted to learn from this guy. He got undergraduates excited about learning, undergraduates who had no intention of becoming historians themselves. He made it matter. Or, better put, he helped people to see that it matters, to see that knowing about history can be intrinsically edifying for the individual. But he died in 1979. I wonder how he would do today. Would people still line up in the hall, hoping to hear snippets of a class they weren’t even taking? Somehow I doubt it. This is where Declining by Degrees really hits home. My high school emphasized the intrinsic value of education—which should be a lifelong process—as part of the formation of the individual; but now it is a means to an end, a tool to get a better-paying job. The system has not countered this cultural trend. This book maintains that students then get what they want through grade inflation, while profs turn to what the universities tell them to do: the old adage again, publish or perish. If one is really writing things that are useful, like Huey Long here, that’s great. But publishing a book just to get tenure or fluff out a C.V. is a disservice to everyone. Libraries will buy it because it seems “scholarly,” others in your field will read it because they feel like they should, everybody will scratch one another’s backs through wasted time and money, and then the undergrad who didn’t really learn anything but instead memorized his notes to get his credits, graduate, and go into marketing is the one who missed out. One day he’ll say, upon hearing someone mention the Versailles Treaty at a cocktail party, “Oh, yeah, I heard about that once.” But when prompted he won’t be able to say anything else.
T. Harry did better than this. He certainly published, but he could work both fields. His research entered the classroom. The classroom then entered his research. It all worked together. I don’t mean to deprecate historians today—I think that very many do manage to incorporate the two, with nods to any faculty who may be with us—but it’s something we should actively think about. And think about before we become TA’s next year. Perhaps the system is at a point now where the professor has to work extra hard to achieve this ideal. If so, then it is worth it to fight back and talk to people outside our field, people without advanced degrees. And this should not require dumbing down anything—universities should keep expectations and standards high, or raise them from their current mediocrity. I firmly believe that people can rise to high standards, even if our cultural environment makes it seem like students just don’t care. We can’t lower the bar just so everybody can reach it; then nobody will imagine a world where the bar might be higher. We can’t focus on those few who already seem to care, or who want to go to grad school in our field, and give the rest up for lost. Instead we have to reach out and help all students rise, but at the same time, with no delusions of grandeur based on the letters that will follow our names. We have to remember that we are here to serve. The Academy should not be a haven for the selfish. It should offer the betterment of individuals and, by extension, society. This is education. It is up to us to save it. Thank you.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
A follow-up
Though not debated here, my previous post stirred up some criticism. I admit that, being nothing more than a ramble written in an already rambling English class that was focusing on an extremely rambling novel, it may not be particularly clear.
If my critics glance here again, please, there is no need to be offended. Notice that I did not cite New York; perhaps this was assumed because of the recent comments by John McCain, which caused a stir among members of my department. I did discuss regions, but I even suggested that this was unfair, that I only have a problem with the generality and not the complete population. Whether that generality applies to many or to a vocal few remains to be determined. But I will stand by this: what some have termed coastal condescension is real. It is not a rule, but it does occur. Among certain segments of the Northeast, as well as people who are not from the Northeast but identify with their impression of it, there is a tendency to frown upon the interior. The flyover states.
But I cannot stress enough that I did not mean to direct anything toward general resident populations of the Northeast or anywhere else. This blog exists for one purpose: to discuss the Academy, primarily American universities, the way scholarship develops, the way it can be biased or misguided by various philosophies, and especially the way learning takes place. And insofar as this is centered around academics, as in, people who work in the Academy, then it does not at all refer to the general American population.
So while I do address America in the post, perhaps I strayed too much from the core point. If someone reads this and says, fuming, "I am from the Northeast and I am not arrogant," then my critique is not about you. I admit I wrote in gross generalities.
Finally, on judgment. I did not especially ask not to be judged (though I admit I used the word). I asked to be allowed to dissent. I wrote:
I am concerned about the illusion of "intellectual freedom" in the Academy, where many assume that intelligent, educated people will reach the same conclusion. For more on this, read my earlier post on the Tyranny of the Majority. And notice that I concluded my English class digression with an afterthought, calling for genuine freedom, bipartisanship but not conformity.
Thank you for your thoughts. I will try my best to be clearer in the future; evidently I left my discussion open for misinterpretation, a fault that surely lies more with the writer than with the reader.
If my critics glance here again, please, there is no need to be offended. Notice that I did not cite New York; perhaps this was assumed because of the recent comments by John McCain, which caused a stir among members of my department. I did discuss regions, but I even suggested that this was unfair, that I only have a problem with the generality and not the complete population. Whether that generality applies to many or to a vocal few remains to be determined. But I will stand by this: what some have termed coastal condescension is real. It is not a rule, but it does occur. Among certain segments of the Northeast, as well as people who are not from the Northeast but identify with their impression of it, there is a tendency to frown upon the interior. The flyover states.
But I cannot stress enough that I did not mean to direct anything toward general resident populations of the Northeast or anywhere else. This blog exists for one purpose: to discuss the Academy, primarily American universities, the way scholarship develops, the way it can be biased or misguided by various philosophies, and especially the way learning takes place. And insofar as this is centered around academics, as in, people who work in the Academy, then it does not at all refer to the general American population.
So while I do address America in the post, perhaps I strayed too much from the core point. If someone reads this and says, fuming, "I am from the Northeast and I am not arrogant," then my critique is not about you. I admit I wrote in gross generalities.
Finally, on judgment. I did not especially ask not to be judged (though I admit I used the word). I asked to be allowed to dissent. I wrote:
I certainly do not ask that the people who make up the Academy change their personal opinions—but I do ask that they not ask this of me.
I am concerned about the illusion of "intellectual freedom" in the Academy, where many assume that intelligent, educated people will reach the same conclusion. For more on this, read my earlier post on the Tyranny of the Majority. And notice that I concluded my English class digression with an afterthought, calling for genuine freedom, bipartisanship but not conformity.
Thank you for your thoughts. I will try my best to be clearer in the future; evidently I left my discussion open for misinterpretation, a fault that surely lies more with the writer than with the reader.
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