Kerby Anderson

New York Times columnist Bret Stephens laments, “Our Vanishing Culture of Argument.” He talks about being a student at the University of Chicago, which he says, “has a culture of argument.” He added that “nearly every undergraduate could not avoid reading the classics of Western thought.” He talks about Socrates, Locke, Hobbes, and the Federalists.

And that might have been true of higher education, but it doesn’t seem like it today. As someone who often was able to speak in college classrooms during the last few decades, I saw the transformation from open debate to indoctrination. Even if you have never set foot on a college campus, you have no doubt seen it in the mindset of students.

He ends his column by focusing on and criticizing Charlie Kirk. The paragraph that has generated so much attention is this. “It’s too bad that Kirk, raised in a Chicago suburb, didn’t attend the University of Chicago. It wouldn’t have hurt getting thrashed in a political debate by smarter peers. Or learning to appreciate the power and moral weight of views he didn’t share.”

Matt Taibbi sees this as one more example of elite arrogance and hopes Bret Stephens isn’t talking about the University of Chicago or other institutions of higher education today. He says that critics of Charlie Kirk ignore the major thrust of much of his college outreach. He could easily do verbal battle with most of the students because college isn’t preparing them for the world of ideas. As he puts it, “college embarrasses its customers.”

The fact that a non-college graduate could hold his own with students and professors in the US and in the UK after spending time in self-study and a few online courses from Hillsdale College exposes both poor arguments and elite arrogance.