The contemporary university is defined by its culture, not its curriculum. It is a conscious, deliberate effort to drain students of meaning, self-confidence and intellectual discernment.
The classical ethos demands of students a transcendence of base instinct into the realm of moral judgment. Community, nationhood and notions of value, in this vision, are based upon ideas. This great tradition stood for the emergence from barbarism, the liberation of man from his animal passions and urges and the order of a structured world. The new ethos, exemplified by relativism, uproots morality and replaces it with identity. In its quest to free men from the duties of moral judgment, the academy has reverted to its sole alternative: tribalism.
What does it mean when the student of international affairs is more likely to encounter Edward Said’s Orientalism than Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution In France, or when the future educator reads Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed rather than Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics? As the classical tradition fades, something needs to take its place. If moral judgment is out, something else must be in. But there is no third way between open inquiry and natural instinct. Debase that great tradition, and there is nothing left. Our institutions remain, but our virtues do not. And with that, we get a distinctly modern tribalism. The postmodern ethos looks a lot like the primitive one.
The contemporary student has no idea what to do with the materials he is handed. He quickly comes face-to-face with cultural relativism, postmodernism, feminism, and myriad other radical causes — in which time he is bombarded with claims about the depravity of the Western tradition. But being completely ignorant of it, he has no context in which to analyze claims against it.
Is traditional Western culture bad? Students say that it is, due to the immense pressure from the university establishment, but the truth is that they generally have no idea whether it is or not. They are ignorant, not malicious. With no background in the great tradition, they have empty minds, and so are drawn to the first passionate cause they encounter, glad that there’s something to live for. The radicals, being manifestly the most passionate, are thus in control of campus culture.
Alas, those who do not think cannot escape the siren song of tribalism. Because I am gay, I cannot speak out against a proposed Women’s Resource Center without being accused by feminists of betraying “my people.” Whoever are “my people?” “My people,” insofar as they actually exist, are those who subscribe to the same virtues as I do; those who aspire to excellence. But the product of relativism cannot begin to understand the notion that “my people” might not share my minority identity. He cannot conceive of communities based upon moral judgments because he does not believe in communities based upon moral judgments. When the campus activist decries Pat Robertson for judging gay men based upon their sexual desires, he is not condemning him for the motives of his judgment —he is condemning him for the fact that he is judging. The point is not that he is incorrect, but that he is daring to inquire. The product of classical virtue and intellectual inquiry can safely and rationally rebut Robertson; the relativist descends into emotional hysteria and knows only how to chant against “hate,” “discrimination” and other incoherent buzzwords.
There are only two real alternatives presenting each new generation: constructive, rational virtue—and primitive identity tribalism. The latter’s campus incarnation, in its attempts to live without using reason, is a parasite feeding off of the gains of the first—but it’s a parasite that kills the host. All men who value the rational mind must unequivocally condemn these modern-day tribalists morally.
Alex Knepper is a sophomore in the School of Public Affairs and a classical liberal columnist for The Eagle. You can reach him at edpage@theeagleonline.com.
