There is an older tradition of higher-education criticism that casts doubt on these hopeful sentiments, and it is a tradition that is worth reviving when it comes to discussions of politics and campus life. The finest (and most controversial) exemplar of this tradition is the late University of Chicago scholar Allan Bloom, whose “The Closing of the American Mind” was a seminal work in the so-called “Culture Wars.” Bloom’s sweeping criticisms of college life and modern society are both occasionally bombastic and more than a little dated, but his excoriation of the rhetoric of “commitment” and “relevance” remains powerful to this day.
Bloom’s argument, made simple, is that the abrasive and confrontational student activism of the 1960s, far from representing a progressive turning point, in fact cut at the heart of the University as a center of free thought. Action and protest replaced inquiry, particularly in the violent campus atmosphere of Bloom’s then-employer Cornell; taking loud positions replaced the careful consideration of arguments. Indeed, the kind of academic pursuit Bloom was engaged in — reading and making sense of such texts as Plato’s Republic — was seen as downright reactionary and out-of-touch. Bloom links this growing fixation on “commitment” to a kind of smiley-faced appropriation of Nietzsche, in which caring about something, “having values,” became more important than figuring out what to value in the first place.
However much pure crankiness comes through in Bloom’s appraisal of the decade, it is hard to deny that he touches on something important. Anyone who has been to a political event or venue of any kind — a protest, a campaign office, a convention — knows that the “public use of reason” is given little place. The point is not to find answers to life’s pressing questions; as with any effective organization or movement, the point is to get results. And what the promise of a paycheck does for businesses the level of certainty and commitment does for pressure groups.
So, to those who say that college is an opportunity to become engaged with important issues, to those who point out all the problems of the world, I can only say: Yes, to be sure. But we’re also like 20. We don’t know what the important issues are (remember “Soylent Green”? Neither do I), and we don’t (or shouldn’t) know what we really think about them. College is a chance to learn more about the world and to ask the big questions that interest groups and our future employers don’t have time for.
This is not a generalized condemnation of political action on campus. I am not so flippant as to embrace the ideal of an Ivory Tower pondering the meaning of a suffering world, and not so dense or hypocritical as to think that Princeton students can or should spend all of their time engaged in high-minded inquiry. I am only asking that we consider whether, for instance, last year’s (admittedly amusing) “Princeton Proposition 8” campaign, with its proposal to “ban freshmen from sidewalks,” really added anything to campus discourse, or indeed did anything to persuade anyone of the rightness of its cause. What kinds of arguments tend to be written in large print?
This is not simply a matter of “learning for learning’s sake.” Sober-minded inquiry clarifies the very problems that exponents of activism harp on so much. However well-intentioned sustainability activists on campus may be, all the environmentalist passion in the world is not a substitute for the work of Princeton’s Tim Searchinger, who discovered that the increased use of corn ethanol, a much-vaunted biofuel, could actually exacerbate global warming. And it does little to address the dilemmas — such as the tradeoff between the good of humanity and the good of the planet — that serious environmentalists must grapple with.
We need to be more careful, then, when we talk about Princeton’s apathy. We can all agree that Princeton students should pay more attention to the issues, but I am much more skeptical of blanket calls for action. Nostalgia for the 1960s, a frivolous belief in commitment for commitment’s sake and (perhaps) a cynical desire to promote one’s own cause has no place in a serious discussion. It is legitimate, and important, to criticize Princeton students’ attitudes towards the rest of the world. But the narcissism of the Organization Kid is little improved on by the solipsism of the ideologue.
Andrew Saraf is a history major from Chevy Chase, Md. He can be reached at asaraf@princeton.edu.
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