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What We’re Reading: COVID-19 Big Reads Bonus Edition

While we are all spending more time at home during this physical-distancing phase of the COVID-19 pandemic and have more time to catch up on reading, we are sharing 10 Big Reads. We start with five Big Reads from the last year: three reports that provide much-needed data to counteract the anecdotes and headline-grabbing protests disrupting campuses; two books that diagnose why colleges struggle to foster open exchange; and five Big Reads from the seventeenth through the twentieth century about the importance of open exchange, free institutions, and diversity of voices to the discovery of knowledge and human flourishing.

 

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Three Recent Reports

Ideological Diversity, Hostility, and Discrimination in Philosophy
Uwe Peters et al. | PhilPapers | forthcoming in Philosophical Psychology

An analysis of an international survey of philosophers finds that respondents were predominantly left-leaning in their political ideology; many reported experiencing hostility from colleagues based on their ideology; and a significant minority were willing to discriminate against colleagues with a different ideology.

Politics on the Quad: Students Report on Division and Disagreement at Five U.S. Universities
Graham Wright et al. | Brandeis University Steinhardt Social Research Institute | November 2019

Reviewing survey results from three private and two public flagship universities, the authors find that, on all five campuses, conservative students were less likely than liberal students to agree that unpopular opinions can be expressed freely. However, there were considerable differences among the five campuses, suggesting that campus climates vary greatly. The report also documents perceptions of the existence of hostile environments toward students of color and Jewish students.

Free Expression and Constructive Dialogue at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Jennifer Larson et al. | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | March 2, 2020

The authors offer findings from their year-long investigation of UNC-Chapel Hill undergraduates’ campus experiences of political expression. The report offers 12 principal findings, including that “students across the political spectrum want more opportunities to engage with those who think differently,” and that “the current campus climate does not consistently promote free expression and constructive dialogue across the political spectrum.”

Two Recent Books

Safe Enough Spaces: A Pragmatist’s Approach to Inclusion, Free Speech, and Political Correctness on College Campuses
Michael S. Roth | Yale University Press | August 20, 2019

Wesleyan University president Michael S. Roth argues that colleges and universities will better carry out their educational mission by enrolling students who come from diverse communities. He argues that colleges and universities must strive to create “safe-enough” classrooms in which students feel free to express their views without fear of reprisal. President Roth spoke on these themes at a BPC Campus Free Expression panel in June 2019, which may be viewed here.

The Tyranny of Virtue: Identity, the Academy, and the Hunt for Political Heresies
Robert Boyers | Simon and Schuster | September 24, 2019

Skidmore College English professor Robert Boyers draws on literary critic Lionel Trilling’s concept of a “total cultural environment” to characterize today’s colleges and universities as places where a set of received ideas and sectarian identity politics have suppressed free academic discussion. This has baleful consequences for learning: “students are often bright and inquiring, but a part of that they learn from their most influential teachers and role models is what not to ask.” Professor Boyers laments how these trends have created a campus call-out culture in a Guardian op-ed.

Five Classic Big Reads

Areopagitica; A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parlament of England
John Milton | 1644

John Milton may be best known as a poet and author of Paradise Lost, but he also wrote political treatises and pamphlets, including four pamphlets in favor of allowing divorce and anti-Royalist tracts that landed him in trouble with the authorities resulting in a royal decree ordering the burning of his writings. Milton wrote Areopagitica to lambast a 1643 law requiring authors to obtain a license to publish their work (Milton, of course, did not submit this tract for a license and boldly had only his name, not his printer’s on the front cover). Milton argues against books being regulated by civil and ecclesiastic authorities on the grounds that “promiscuous” reading is the best way to understanding: “how can we more safely and with less danger scout into the regions of sin and falsity than by reading all manner of tractates, and hearing all manner of reason? And this is the benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read.” Milton’s tolerance, however, did not extend to include Catholic authors: “not [to be] tolerated [are] popery and open superstition.” 

On Liberty
John Stuart Mill | 1859

More often cited than read, John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty asserts the necessity of allowing all opinions to be aired, otherwise false opinions will not be countered and the reasons supporting true opinions will be forgotten. The Free Expression and Constructive Dialogue at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill report listed above noted that a significant minority of students engage in social distancing from those whose political views differ from their own; for example, almost a quarter of self-identified liberals stated that they would not befriend a conservative—a finding that would be especially worrying to Mill, who notes that “he who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.” In the oft-overlooked final chapter, Mill applies his principles to public policy questions of his time such as opium imports, prostitution, and whether to require universal education—examples which invite discussion of how Mill’s principles may apply to contemporary debates about vaping, religious advertising, and public school curricula.

Personal Knowledge: Towards A Post-Critical Philosophy
Michael Polanyi | University of Chicago Press | 1958

Michael Polanyi challenged that notion scientific and scholarly knowledge follow from the application of an impersonal, objective method. He argued instead that the acquisition of knowledge demands “a personal commitment which is involved in all acts of intelligence” (emphasis in original). Polanyi also introduced the notion “tacit knowledge” to explain how, in scholarship as well as ordinary life, we rely to a significant degree on knowledge that cannot be explained in words but  through practice and imitation. Polanyi, who left Germany in 1933 after the rise of the Nazi party, noted how the advancement of knowledge depends on free cultural and civic institutions as well as  a “common inheritance of values and beliefs” that support “an autonomous process of coherent thought.”

The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind
Michael Oakeshott | Bowes & Bowes | 1959

Although only “poetry” appears in the essay’s title, British philosopher Michael Oakeshott described several “modes” or “voices” of discourse, including the voices of practical activity, poetry, history, philosophy, and science, which meet in “the conversation of mankind.” For Oakeshott, university education at its highest is “education as a preparation for participation in conversation.” Oakeshott marvelously describes conversation as “an unrehearsed intellectual adventure. It is with conversation as with gambling, its significance lies neither in winning nor in losing, but in wagering. Properly speaking, it is impossible in the absence of a diversity of voices: in it different universes of discourse meet, acknowledge each other and enjoy an oblique relationship which neither requires nor forecasts their being assimilated to one another.”

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Thomas S. Kuhn | University of Chicago Press | 1962

Thomas S. Kuhn’s book, developed from his study of why there was such deep resistance to adopting a Copernican sun-centered model of the solar system among medieval and renaissance scholars, was itself a revolution in the way scientific progress was understood. Kuhn argued that scientific knowledge is not accumulated gradually but proceeds step-wise: a scientific community works within a “paradigm” that defines assumptions and research priorities until scientists come across anomalous results that cannot be resolved within the current paradigm, which forces the scientific community to undertake the psychologically strenuous task of giving up its old paradigm for a new one. Kuhn’s volume remains a delight share with undergraduates to discuss what counts as evidence in academic analysis, the nature of academic networks, and how scholarly consensus is achieved or challenged.

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