Saturday, July 2, 2022
Preface to John Sexton's Standing for Reason: The University in a Dogmatic Age (2019)
Charlie had a phrase he used to exhort us to live life fully: "Play another octave of the piano." His explanation was a command: "If there are notes you have not touched, reach out and touch them. If there is a food you have not tasted, if there is music you have not heard, if there is a place you have not seen, if there is a person whose story you do not know, reach out to experience more fully the wonders of creation. Expand your horizons. So long as it is legal and moral, try anything new at least once." (xix)
"Consider teaching. It is the noblest and most fulfilling of all vocations." (xix)
"My tale yields some useful lessons. First, failure is not necessarily the end of a story; often, there will be a Tim Healy or Molly Geraghty to offer rehabilitation and even redemption. And second, it is good to remember that there was a time, and for some there still is a time, when it was understood that a life in education was the highest calling. Such beliefs may be viewed as anachronistic or naive to some." (xxv)
"When I encountered Charlie Winans and Danny Berrigan in the 1950s, most Americans trusted our leaders and the fundamental institutions of society. Today, that trust is gone." (xxvii)
"Today, there is no such room. A chasm separates two warring tribes, with each side wondering how the "others" could be the way they are-- and with each side unwilling to engage in a serious conversation with the other." (xxix)
"In chapter 1, "Dogmatism, Complexity, and Civic Discourse," I start with the terrifying proposition that, unless current trends are reversed, the enterprise of thought is in danger, as Americans develop an allergy to nuance and complexity and civic discourse warps into a virulent secular dogmatisms. Political positions now have been elevated to the status of doctrinal truths, embedded beliefs that are taken as givens and cannot be questioned; they have been "revealed."
In chapter 2, "The Traditional University as Sacred Space for Discourse," I argue that our colleges and universities are the best hope for curing this disease, and I describe the characteristics they must manifest and the policies that their leaders must embrace if they are to serve this role.
In chapter 3, "A University for an Ecumenical World," I argue that some colleges and universities should move beyond this traditional role to assume a more ambitious office: acting as incubators for a secular ecumenism that not only rejects secular dogmatism but also seeks to build a community of interlocking communities, a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts -- a world that today is only a dream.
Finally, in chapter 4, "The Final Ingredient: Meaningful Access for All," I contend that, if higher education is to play these two related roles, it is imperative that every person, without regard to station or financial means, have a meaningful opportunity to attend the college or university that matches his or her talent....If we hope to create an ecumenical world, every citizen of that world must have the opportunity to acquire the tools that can be used to shape it. (xxix-xxx)
John Sexton, Standing for Reason: The University in a Dogmatic Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019).