Professors professing, a novel idea...

The following was motivated by the questions and concerns posed by Vanderbilt professor of political theory, William Booth, at a recent Faculty Friday:

The trend of so-called objectivity in education which seeks to accommodate every viewpoint is not necessarily a bad thing. The manner by which this objectivity is achieved, however, eliminates any notion of truth as it fails to stake out any sort of claim as an absolute starting point. The professor, instead of being a mind with which his students are meant to grapple and challenge, has become a glorified group discussion facilitator. The root word of his job title is "PROFESS," which implies a truth not only being believed-in but also being proclaimed. Yet in this stifling atmosphere of political correctness and civil discourse, most are afraid to profess anything to a young mind else run the risk of hurting the student's feelings. But that is education-- learning, toiling, being engaged and exhausted.

Students do not have to believe what the professor professes, but ought be entitled to actually be professed-to and able to respond to that profession. This is the dialectic by which Truth is best revealed and arrived at-- look at Socrates in the Platonic Dialogues, for example. The Athenians knew where Socrates stood and engaged him in a deeply meaningful and insightful debate from which both sides advanced together. For, indeed, the adversarial system is possibly the best for generating true zeal and true intellectual fruit. But, in order to have a dialogue, someone must actually say something. A lecture hall full of listeners, including the person behind the podium, ceases to be a lecture hall and becomes merely a large group therapy session where feelings can be espoused and shallow, ill-conceived viewpoints unleashed.

Academia has ceased to be a place of formation and instead a place where the languishing soul has the opportunity to describe the status quo of mental idleness. The soul must be shaken; it must be rattled-- and the source of this tumultuous jarring is the noble calling of the professor-- to make a claim which the professor is committed to so much that he is willing to stake his whole life's work and scholarship on advancing it. It might not be right, and there is no requisite that it need be. But the professor must be required to say something and to defend it. And he must say it to the minds who pay him for who he is-- for the mind and ideas he has. Just as iron sharpens iron, the passion for an idea perceived as Truth which springs forth from the professor's mind will confront the thirsty, gelatinous sponge of the souls of the student.

The professor who is concerned that he may unduly influence the inexperienced soul of the youth has two fundamental problems: first, he obviously doesn't believe what he has to say himself. While humility is a virtue, the professor must at least have confidence that the topic he engages from his vantage point is the true way, else why waste his own time, let alone the rest of Academia's. If one doesn't believe what one says, and simply enjoys putting forth ideas, why be a professor as opposed to a columnist? Second, the view is short-sighted and pessimistically shallow. Indeed, a student is vulnerable as a young mind; students are certainly inexperienced, but they are not vegetables. What the mind lacks the conscience will engage. Now, one's conscience may be dulled and under-developed, but this is not the concern of the professor. The professor's job is academics and the use of knowledge and ideas, science and reason, toward the advance of Truth.

Truth is not pluralist or ecumenically accommodating. It is singular and resoundingly so. It speaks only positively of itself, and calls all other views false. There are many heresies, but only one orthodoxy. And all of humanity's task ought be directed toward that. Heretics may initially be well-intentioned about engaging a debate and taking up an idea--heretics simply lack the capacity to see beyond their own vanity after being confronted with the orthodox truth. That is why it is not evil to take a stand which just so happens to be false. It is simply evil to remain there once you know you are standing in a cesspool. But the current system of "higher" education neglects to evaluate the position of one's footing, only to make sure everyone has the opportunity to say that they are, in fact, standing on something. The professor should care about whether that something his students are standing on is a miry swamp of festering leeches; but modernity's wisdom tells us that that might harm the student's perception of his or her self-worth as a person. Who cares that they are following a path of falsehood?! Somehow that is humane.

The professor ought envision himself more as a steersman than a cheerleader. Not every thought is good. Not every opinion worthy of the same consideration. It may be the case that there is no such thing as a stupid question, but, assuredly, it must be conceded that there is such a thing as a stupid idea. I am often reminded in my own mind of the imaginary room occupied by immortal monkeys who have a typewriter upon which they hammer away all day. They don't know what they are typing, but simply know that they are punching keys. What appears on the page is of no consequence to them. But given enough time and enough paper, eventually, one day (by sheer chance) one of the monkeys will have typed out a Shakespearean sonnet. At that point it would be nice for someone to step in and evaluate all the typed pages compared to this last one; to stop the incessant hammering away of the primates and say that something beautiful has been achieved, that something has been arrived at which is great. Further, that that something is worth looking at critically, it is worth putting out there and being said and being heard. It is worth doing this in order to see if the baboon can be lead to become more than a keystroking simpleton and, instead, a poet. But that means someone stands up, stops all the static blather, and monotonous hum-drum of keys and says, "This page, this one, and none of the rest is special, is true. And here's why…" And that someone, my friends, is a professor. Professors do not tolerate key-punching, but, rather, sonnet writing. Unfortunately, the current university sounds only of a torrent pecking of keys which generate evermore the archives of intellectual nothingness and soulful emptiness.