Higher Ed Has a Credibility Problem

For much of history, human beings went to war over knowledge: my tribe and our beliefs vs. your tribe and its beliefs. So it makes sense that philosophers have long been preoccupied with the question of how to manage ideological conflict. Plato recommended rule by an enlightened authoritarian; Hobbes advocated a “leviathan”; Rousseau had a sunnier prescription: Governments should promote the “general will,” a society’s better instincts. (Who gets to define those instincts is another, thornier matter.) When all else failed, and it often did, there was violence. As Charles Sanders Peirce wrote in 1877: “When complete agreement could not otherwise be reached, a general massacre of all who have not thought in a certain way has proved a very effective means of settling opinion in a country.”