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Despite conservative fearmongering about student and faculty revolutionaries, the humanities seem to be about as politically powerless as Vonnegut assessed more than 20 years ago. The increasing politicalization of humanities departments over the past decade has occurred in parallel with the increasing radicalization of the right during that same period, and the former has done positively nothing to curtail the latter.
The Humanities Have Sown the Seeds of Their Own Destruction - The Atlantic
Tyler Austin Harper
A Democratic Spirit is one that combines rigor and humility, i.e., passionate conviction plus a sedulous respect for the convictions of others. As any American knows, this is a difficult spirit to cultivate and maintain, particularly when it comes to issues you feel strongly about. Equally tough is a DS’s criterion of 100 percent intellectual integrity—you have to be willing to look honestly at yourself and at your motives for believing what you believe, and to do it more or less continually.
Libertarianism speaks to the American myth of the self-made man and the lonely pioneer on the plains. (Glorification of men is a recurring feature.) Like Marxism, it is a complete explanatory system. It appeals to supersmart engineers and others who never really grow up.
George Packer
theatlantic.com
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