{"id":19,"date":"2011-05-14T20:55:52","date_gmt":"2011-05-15T00:55:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=19"},"modified":"2011-05-14T20:55:52","modified_gmt":"2011-05-15T00:55:52","slug":"academic-bigotry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/05\/academic-bigotry.html","title":{"rendered":"Academic Bigotry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Closing in on his second master\u2019s degree in biblical studies, a good friend of mine is about to defend his 60-page thesis on the creation accounts in the book of Genesis.\u00a0 <\/em>In the eleventh hour, though, he has run into a problem: his advisor has informed him just one week outside of his defense that he needs to \u201csubstantially engage\u201d the work of an author whose position, he swears, is utterly immaterial to his project.\u00a0 So, we must ask, from whence comes this unusual demand on the part of his advisor?<\/p>\n

My friend\u2019s experience is a commentary on the tragic condition into which the contemporary university has lapsed.\u00a0 A white, heterosexual man laboring under the delusion that an analysis of the Bible could afford to dispense with considerations of race, gender, and class, he is learning what all contemporary students of the liberal arts and humanities learn: there is no <\/em>datum of human experience that isn\u2019t determined <\/em>by this triumvirate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Far be it from me to deny that our personal identities are encumbered by a complex of contingencies and particularities.\u00a0 The belief, though, that all meaning is reducible to and explicable in terms of race, gender, and class is nothing more or less than leftist dogma, a fiction posing as stone-cold fact.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

This in itself wouldn\u2019t amount to much more than a passing curiosity if today\u2019s American and European liberal arts and humanities departments weren\u2019t dominated by leftists.\u00a0 But since the situation is otherwise, it is a real problem to with which we must reckon.<\/p>\n

The leftist, the academic leftist in particular, is indeed an intriguing character.\u00a0 He (or she) is the self-declared enemy of traditional Western metaphysics and ethics\u2014the philosophy originating with the Greeks (primarily Plato and Aristotle) and the religion of Christianity: for the concepts of \u201ctruth\u201d (moral or otherwise), \u201cobjectivity,\u201d \u201cBeing,\u201d \u201cessence,\u201d \u201cReason,\u201d and the like, he has no patience.\u00a0 Moreover, it is not all uncommon to find among academic leftists a contemptuous attitude toward the notion of \u201cfact\u201d and even that principle without which philosophers had always insisted thought itself would be impossible, \u201cthe principle of non-contradiction,\u201d the law<\/em> that something can\u2019t be and not be in the same respect and at the same time.<\/p>\n

However, before we endorse the leftist\u2019s self-conception and judge that he is a radical critic of the Western tradition, we must bear in mind the following considerations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

First, \u201cthe skepticism\u201d of which he is an ardent promoter has roots reaching back into the ancient world.\u00a0 Indeed, from its inception the rich complex of ideas of which the Western philosophical tradition consists has contained no small ingredient of skepticism.\u00a0 It is only by way of reducing Western civilization to a one-dimensional caricature of itself that the leftist can posture as the radical detractor that he imagines himself to be.\u00a0 Like the prodigal son, he has appreciation neither for the priceless inheritance bequeathed to him nor for the sacrifices that were made to accumulate and preserve it throughout the millennia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Second, and more importantly, the leftist\u2019s \u201cskepticism\u201d is a fake, a rhetorical veneer designed to conceal the fact that his ideological predilections are in reality a species of skepticism\u2019s antithesis, absolutism, <\/em>a position or school of thought that has enjoyed a prominence in Western thought to which genuine skepticism has never so much as remotely approximated.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The skepticism of more conservative-minded thinkers as Hume and Burke, Pascal, Montaigne, William of Ockam, and the \u201cOckamist movement\u201d that the latter inspired sprung, not from any desire to prove that \u201cMan was the measure of all things,\u201d but from the keen observation that the powers of the human intellect weren\u2019t nearly as expansive as the West\u2019s theorists have usually supposed.\u00a0 That is, skepticism as it manifested itself in this tradition encouraged, and was intended to encourage, intellectual humility and, not infrequently, faith <\/em>in God.<\/p>\n

His nods to humility notwithstanding, the contemporary leftist is as obsessed with achieving certainty, and as certain that he has achieved it as the villains\u2014like Descartes\u2014against whom he regularly rails.\u00a0 If there are any doubts concerning this, we need look no further than the leftist\u2019s stance(s) on race, gender, and class to disabuse ourselves of them once and for all.<\/p>\n

\u201cRacism,\u201d \u201csexism,\u201d \u201cclassism,\u201d \u201chomophobia,\u201d \u201cimperialism,\u201d \u201ccolonialism,\u201d and the like are unmitigated evils: of this the leftist has not a shred <\/em>of doubt.\u00a0 If ever there was a \u201cfact,\u201d this is it, and beyond being a mere fact, it is a categorical \u201ctruth.\u201d\u00a0 Anyone who has ever attempted to engage in a discussion with an academic leftist (or, for that matter, any leftist ideologue) over the issues of \u201caffirmative action,\u201d abortion, immigration, \u201csame sex marriage,\u201d the morality of homosexuality, the death penalty, poverty, George W. Bush, the Republican Party, or any number of other issues knows all too well that the tolerance that he ascribes to himself is an illusion.\u00a0 Not only wouldn\u2019t a genuinely tolerant person need to resort so readily to hurling insults at those with whom he disagrees, he also wouldn\u2019t be convinced that just because these insults have been given names by his colleagues and written about by them ad infinitum that they are thereby meaningful, much less eligible for employment in civil, rational discourse.<\/p>\n

The leftist doesn\u2019t really <\/em>reject \u201cfact\u201d and \u201ctruth\u201d; he rejects those \u201cfacts\u201d and \u201ctruths\u201d that are endorsed by his opponents.\u00a0 He is not skeptical of reason\u2019s claims to knowledge; he is skeptical of his opponents\u2019 reason\u2019s claims to knowledge.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

Our verdict, then, is clear: the leftist is incoherent.\u00a0 Whether, however, this incoherence is the product of sloppy thinking, hypocrisy, or dishonesty, it is difficult to say.\u00a0 The safest bet is to conclude that, containing as it does all three elements in its DNA, it is a mutt.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Closing in on his second master\u2019s degree in biblical studies, a good friend of mine is about to defend his 60-page thesis on the creation accounts in the book of Genesis.\u00a0 In the eleventh hour, though, he has run into a problem: his advisor has informed him just one week outside of his defense that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nAcademic Bigotry<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, nofollow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Academic Bigotry\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Closing in on his second master\u2019s degree in biblical studies, a good friend of mine is about to defend his 60-page thesis on the creation accounts in the book of Genesis.\u00a0 In the eleventh hour, though, he has run into a problem: his advisor has informed him just one week outside of his defense that…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/05\/academic-bigotry.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"At the Intersection of Faith and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-05-15T00:55:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jack Kerwick\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Academic Bigotry","robots":{"index":"noindex","follow":"nofollow"},"og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Academic Bigotry","og_description":"Closing in on his second master\u2019s degree in biblical studies, a good friend of mine is about to defend his 60-page thesis on the creation accounts in the book of Genesis.\u00a0 In the eleventh hour, though, he has run into a problem: his advisor has informed him just one week outside of his defense that…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/05\/academic-bigotry.html","og_site_name":"At the Intersection of Faith and Culture","article_published_time":"2011-05-15T00:55:52+00:00","author":"Jack Kerwick","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/05\/academic-bigotry.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/05\/academic-bigotry.html","name":"Academic Bigotry","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-05-15T00:55:52+00:00","dateModified":"2011-05-15T00:55:52+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/6832222998cc14717ded1849531201c5"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/05\/academic-bigotry.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/05\/academic-bigotry.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/05\/academic-bigotry.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Academic Bigotry"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/","name":"At the Intersection of Faith and Culture","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Jack Kerwick","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/6832222998cc14717ded1849531201c5","name":"Jack Kerwick","description":"I have a Ph.D. in philosophy from Temple University, a master's degree in philosophy from Baylor University, and a bachelor's degree in philosophy and religious studies from Wingate University. 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