 Hi, I'm James. And I'm Anthony. And this is Words and Numbers. So at this week we're talking about life on college campuses, what with the semester winding down and the end of the year upon us. It does us well to reflect a little bit on the state of higher education in these United States. Yes, some of the students are going squirrely this spring. Yeah, no, that seems to be right. And it seems always to be this notion of college as a safe space which makes them so violent and hotheaded. And that astounds me because at the same time we're talking about the value of a college education, we've got some students who are attacking the very thing that makes a college education valuable. And that's that it isn't a safe space, not intellectually. It's gotten actually quite absurd lately. Any rational person, I think, would agree if you just step back and take a look at some of the assertions being made by college students across the country. I mean, the one that comes to mind immediately, or how shall we put this, Ant, medium-sized Catholic institution of higher learning at the gates of the Midwest, the students have become quite agitated because of all things a Chick-fil-A is opening on campus. A Chick-fil-A is opening on campus. The students are upset about this, particularly students who are interested quite rightly so in LGBT rights. They're concerned because this Chick-fil-A's owners are associated with anti-gay stances. But the odd thing is, they're suggesting that this creates, the presence of Chick-fil-A creates an unsafe space, but this is on a Catholic college campus. And the Catholic Church has been, you know, at least officially against gay marriage for longer than there have been chickens. Probably 2,000 years or so now if my off the cuff math is any good. Right, right. So the claim that all of a sudden this campus has become an unsafe space just doesn't ring true. Well, no, that's exactly right. Not only does it not ring true, I mean, ultimately we have to take seriously, I guess, and I don't know how to do this, the belief, the apparently honestly held belief that in a restaurant that specializes in making chicken sandwiches makes you unsafe. Yeah, I mean, there's that on its face of, you know, how can making chicken sandwiches make you unsafe? And of course it's the association, right, with the anti-gay position. But the interesting thing is, if you really want to make a point about, you know, being pro-LGBT, the way to go about it is not to shut them down, but to be out there every day that they're open protesting. Because this is a beautiful backdrop against which you can make your pro-LGBT message known. But you shut them down, well then there's no conversation at all. And I think that's the key thing that's going on here is when we shut conversation down, there's no more discussion and that's the antithetical to what a university should be about. But when you say things like, and here maybe you're a crazy person, when you say things like there should just be more protesting, take a look at some of the protests that have been lodged in the past four or five months now at college campuses across the country. We actually see speakers being shouted down, physical violence in the name of protest. It's gotten absolutely out of hand. Yeah, and I think here there are some people at least who miss the point of protest. The point of the protest should be to bring the conversation to the fore and to encourage us to come to some solution on this question. And that's not what protests are being used for on college campuses largely. They're being used to stop conversation entirely. And that's not a path to finding truth. In fact, the reverse, it's a path to obfuscating truth. Right, but if you really take a look at college students across the country and we do this on a regular basis, right, given our line of work, it's become painfully clear to me at least, and I'm happy to make this assertion, that college students show up to college ready to teach, not ready to learn. They already think they know, they think they already know every single thing that they have to know, and they're absolutely dogmatic in their point of view, right? There is no room for conversation with any of them. Yeah, and I'd back off that statement a little bit because I think there are plenty of students who actually do arrive in a state of intellectual humility, of wanting to learn. But interestingly, they tend not to be the vocal ones. The vocal ones are the ones that have decided that they already know what they know and they're going to now educate the rest of us. Yeah, so maybe the case that we often make when we talk about how the news media pollutes our national discourse, right? Maybe it's the case that we only see one type of student in the media, and as we wander through campuses, right, the most vocal, the most out-to-launch, right, the craziest of the bunch. Those are the ones everybody pays attention to, but maybe we'd do better if we paid attention to nearly everyone else. Yeah, I think that's true. Students like everyone else are heterogeneous, right, there are differences all across the board. I think one of the things that we have to keep in mind is that to an extent, the faculty themselves have some blame in this, because for a long time now, faculties have tended not to engage, if you picture the standard dichotomy of the left versus the right on college campus. Faculty have tended to be less apt to engage each other than to shout each other down or to silent each other through denying tenure or denying grant monies or whatever it may be. So to that extent, the students may have been picking up some of these techniques from their elders. Well, it does seem to be the case actually, and the more you appeal away the veneer on some of the incidents that have occurred in the past few months, the more you realize that faculty are involved in a rather hip, deep fashion, right? And we can we can rattle off a few of the unfortunate things that have occurred over the past few months, right? We had, was it Charles Murray at Middlebury College, right, and shouted down. And then there was an incident at Claremont McKenna College out in California, and most recently, Larry Reed, president of Fee, right, the good people who post this video was shouted down to some extent at the University of Colorado in Denver. Well, he was only shouted down. The other two actually were done in physical violence, as I recall. Yeah, there was there was some unpleasantness, enhanced unpleasantness with the other two. And the sad thing in my mind is that not only are we not shocked by this, we've come to expect it, right? We hear that there'll be a speaker on campus. And we just say up here we go again. I guess there's going to be a riot in Berkeley, right? Of course, there's going to be. And that's the saddest thing of all. Because when it comes right down to it, a college campus is the place for the free exchange of ideas. And we don't get that. The college campus, the college campus of all places should not be intellectually safe. That's exactly where you're supposed to grapple with ideas. And I think the thing is this, if, if you believe, and not all people do, but if you believe that truth is objective, that doesn't necessarily mean it's knowable, but that there is some truth out there. The way we approach it, even if we can't attain it, the way we approach it, is by engaging with each other. And so, and so debate becomes not a matter of me versus you, but you and I together versus ignorance. And so we become, it becomes a process of mutual error correction rather than beating each other down. And that's the point that we've lost. This debate on college campuses largely now has ceased to be mutual error correction. And it's become a contest in which there are winners and losers. Yeah, no, and for those of you keeping score at home, Anthony Davies just became a Platonist. So mark your calendar. This is the day it finally came to pass that you embraced Plato fully. But I think you're absolutely right, right? The truth to the extent that we can find it will be found in the dialectic, right, in the argument that we have with each other on the best of terms. Right. Right? Not as staunch partisans, but as what Aristotle might have called friends of the truth. Yes, yes. And yet we just don't seem inclined to do this anymore. And I think you're right to some degree to lay this at the feet of faculty. I think that over time, the university has become politicized. Faculty are partisans. And we get the equivalent of Fox News shouting heads. They're not even talking heads, they're just shouting heads. And I would imagine that some of that comes from, well, it comes ultimately, it has its root in a lack of intellectual humility. But if you honestly believe you are right on a certain point, you'll naturally, because we're human beings, you'll naturally push that. And it's something that faculty of all people need to guard against, right? These are highly, highly educated people. And of course, you get that level of education. And the natural human thing is to start thinking that you have all the answers. And we could all take a page from Socrates here and be the first to admit that we actually don't know anything. How did this happen? How did you come to be a Platonist? I've been hanging out with you too long, James. Well, you probably have been. That's right. But you know, the way these things start to shake out is it's a little bit odd when you think about it, right? Because you're right, faculty, ourselves included, we go through a process of education where we explore things very deeply. And then we think we know something. And to some degree, of course, we do. But if that's true and we are, in fact, right in our opinions, it shouldn't be terribly difficult to give reasons for those opinions, right? And the giving of reasons is part and parcel of what we're supposed to be doing. Make your assertion and then give your reasons. And then we'll all reason together. But really, what it's come to lately, and I don't know exactly when this came to pass. But what it's come to is simply now making assertions. Right. Yeah, yeah. And the louder you can make them and the greater the faculty rank you have when you're making them, apparently, that's what it takes to win. And we're doing the Academy and the world in general a disservice because we're raising a group of, and this will be the next generation of intellectuals, the students who are there now. We're raising them to think not in a humble way, but rather to treat knowledge somehow as a weapon, that you beat the other guy over the head with it. And when he's finally silent, well, you must be right. Yeah, no, that's right. And to put it in platonic terms, this is Thrasymachus' argument in the Republic might makes right. As long as you're more powerful than your opponent, you're by definition correct. And I and you apparently don't think for one second that that's anywhere even close to right. No, that's absolutely right. And that's not to say that either one of us is sure of our own rightness either. But I think it's always important to take a step back and ask yourself when you when you encounter someone with whom you disagree, look for what it is the person saying that is right, because there's something in there. You might have to dig, but there's something in what the person is saying that has a grain of truth. And if you can find that, you'll find common ground with the other person. And that's the first step to actually the two of you moving together toward finding the truth rather than beating each other over the head. Yeah, no, and I think it does us well to admit or to at least acknowledge that this is a lifelong process, right? It never stops, right? And how do I how do I know that all of my opinions are not correct right now? Well, I can look back over the course of my life and see just how many of them have changed and changed significantly over time. I don't believe many of the things that I believed very firmly even 20 years ago. Yeah, the scary thing there, James, is how many of the things that we believe now are we not going to believe 20 years from now? I suspect the answer to that question is quite a few, but probably not as many as from 20 years ago from this point, right? Because you learn more over time and you become more discerning and you just simply get better at these things. But I don't for one second think I'm right about every. Well, I do think I'm right about everything. But in my in my more honest moments, I know that's not true, right? And I wonder, I wonder what I've gotten wrong. And I actually embrace the opportunity to talk to people with whom I disagree significantly. And I wish they would embrace the opportunity to talk to me, too. And that seems not to be happening so much. So, you know, we're about out of time. I'll throw it back to you for a last take on the matter if you've got one. Well, we started off talking about this this university out on the gateway to the Midwest, that's Catholic school and which people are having difficulty with the Chick-fil-A being on campus. And and it being a Catholic institution, perhaps perhaps there's a lesson there. The Catholic Church itself has has evolved over time, you know, once upon a time, you know, people who were gay were put to the sword and then they weren't. And now with our latest pope when asked, you know, is it a sin to be gay? He says, who am I to say who's a sinner? And you see the same kind of process, albeit in slower motion than we'd like, perhaps, but the same sort of process of discovery and engaging the truth there that we would hope to to see on college campuses. That's all the time we've got this week on Words and Numbers. But stop on by next week, Wednesdays at about noon, when a new episode will come up. Until then, check out fee.org for all kinds of fascinating content. See you next week. Take it easy and see you next week. See you next week, James.