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“Academic freedom is not a self-justifying good. It must be oriented to some end that merits the support of those who finance it. One end of liberal education is the advancement of knowledge, which requires diverse opinions and the freedom to challenge orthodoxy. But another is to preserve and transmit a social and cultural inheritance. This is true if the transmission encourages challenges to the tradition as well.
The mere expansion of knowledge understood as information without an accompanying sense of philosophical wisdom and moral limitation is unable to justify itself or prevent its own abuse. Theodore Roosevelt, perhaps before the Progressive virus—one of whose symptoms is hyper-rationalism—fully infected him, explained: “There is not in all America a more dangerous trait than the deification of mere smartness unaccompanied by any sense of moral responsibility.”
This quotation speaks to the problem that seems to be endemic today in so much of higher education – a lack of a philosophical ‘North Star’ that guides and orientates the academic scholarship at universities and colleges. The transmission of our culture’s bedrock values, Classical Liberalism, seems to have been mostly replaced by a cadre of activist academics that seek not to preserve and strengthen our society, but rather ruthlessly criticize and pull apart that values that make higher education possible in the first place.
A better balance must be struck.
Investigate the two options given. Which one requires a cultural commissar to ensure you’re doing it right? I think most people are still going to pick “A” in private, but due to negative pressure and threat in society might choose “B” in public.
It is only your integrity that is at stake. We are defined by the choices we make and do not make. Too much of stable Western society is a peril for people who believe A, but meekly accept B to think that their actions are somehow ‘right’.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
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