It’s too bad Bret Stephens never debated Charlie Kirk. He’d have had to defend the idea that students at places like the University of Chicago are not only “smarter” than ignorant red-staters (and students at schools like Cambridge), but more schooled in the “Western tradition” of “skepticism,” as opposed to “certitude.”
Does Stephens mean currently? If so, that’s rich. The cultural schism now widening under all of us in America has surely been caused at least in part by a shift in the attitudes of the very people Stephens calls “the greatest scholars.” Professors abandon skepticism for certitude in a range of hot-button issues, including a conspicuous one that may have had an impact on Kirk’s murder, transgender ideology.
And “smarter”? Stephens needs a fresh look at what passes for instruction and re-examine whether students are really being taught to think better. He should ask if it’s not instead true that institutional America is and has been systematically ripping off its young, a question Kirk threw at students everywhere, often with devastating results. It’s not surprising that scenes of kids who casually admit they “hate books” but were welcomed to pay tuition anyway haven’t made too many of the “Kirk’s greatest misdeeds” reels currently circulating:
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college embarrasses its customers…