The Tyranny of Virtue: Political Correctness Run Amuck on Our Campuses

Once upon a time, we didn’t have to think about political correctness. And we survived as a culture! We self-corrected, we became more sensitive to others, we learned to accept and appreciate diversity. It was sometimes difficult, even painful. But a lot of it was organic. Often we slipped up. We fell backward, and sometimes it even took appropriate legislation to provide better guardrails for our behavior. Such was the forward march of mankind.

But today, the bludgeon of political correctness hangs over all of us. And nowhere worse than on our college campuses. The fear of free speech, the absurdity of safe spaces, the desire to silence unpopular ideas and the seeking out of problems and conflicts that don’t really exist, are all hallmarks of where we are today.

But how did we get here, and is there any path out that does not divides us still further, polarize us even more and further enhance the sanctimony of those who consider their ideas singularly virtuous.

Skidmore professor Robert Boyers, the subject of a story in this week’s New Yorker takes us into the belly of the beast of political correctness in his new book The Tyranny of Virtue: Identity, the Academy, and the Hunt for Political Heresies.

My conversation with Robert Boyers:

After your kid gets into college, how will he/she come out?

Like most of us, I’ve just spent the past few months listening to parents agonize about their their high school graduates and where they were going to college. The college tour, the campus visit, the stress, the applications, the waiting, the status, the acceptance and figuring out the cost and how to pay. These are just a few of the inflection points in getting kids into college today.

However not as much thought or effort goes into to thinking about what the academic experience will be like. No, not the social and emotional experience, but the academic experience. You know, the actually learning that goes on in the classroom. The actual transfer of knowledge that is the cornerstone of education.

It’s interesting that while we are seeing a lot of progress and disruption in K-12 education, including project based learning, collaborative learning, the effective use of online resources and the incorporation of technology, oddly enough we’ve yet to see nearly as much disruption in higher education.

Jacques Berlinerblau, director of the Center for Jewish Civilization at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, gets to the essence of this in his new book Campus Confidential: How College Works, or Doesn't, for Professors, Parents, and Students

My conversation with Jacques Berlinerblau