Beyond the Battlefield of Ideas – Jacob Wolf

David Brooks argues that a university cannot be an open society in all respects.

He says it must be bounded in certain ways in order to achieve its fundamental mission.

Truth is the north star of the university—of any university, he says.

The university is not a democracy; we need not place the same value upon all ideas.

A university is a community of shared memory, the chief instrument by which the achievements of the past are transmitted to the present as a body of knowledge upon which future knowledge can be built.

It is, as we are fond of saying around UATX , about preserving a tradition of “the best that has been thought and said.”.

In his Open Society and Its Enemies, Karl Popper identifies Plato as the first and greatest enemy of the open society.

Popper takes particular issue with the top-down imposition by Plato ’s guardians, the hierarchical structure therein, and the relentless and almost religious obsession with truth and virtue.

But we should not conflate the institution of society with education, as what makes one flourish might poison the other.