The President of Yale, Richard C. Levin, spoke in support of a Singapore branch of Yale College like this:
There has never been a greater need for undergraduate education that cultivates critical inquiry. In a world that is increasingly interconnected, the qualities of mind developed through liberal education are perhaps more indispensable than ever in preparing students to understand and appreciate differences across cultures and boundaries, and to address problems for which there are no easy solutions.
I suppose President Levin uses a speechwriter but still . . . It reads like something a college student would write in answer to an essay question when they hadn’t done the reading. What does “critical inquiry” have to do with understanding cultural differences? The first and second sentences could have been written by two different people. What possessed Levin to imply that people without a liberal education — such as MIT and Caltech graduates — can only solve problems for which there are easy answers? Or did he fail to understand what he was reading?
Couldn’t he, like, hire a better speechwriter? Or is “liberal education” so hard to defend that no one can coherently defend it?
He’s the product of the education he proposes
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Looks like your server has been infected. Your posts are not affected when viewed from a browser, but when the Googlebot comes visiting, this virus alters what gets passed to it, so those who read your posts in Google Reader get the impression that you have suddenly become obsessed with medicines for male enhancement.
I agree that his statement about cross-cultural understanding doesn’t make a lot of sense. However, I don’t understand your criticism of “liberal education”. By “liberal education” I understand an education that includes a broad range of disciplines.
Now, I live and work (as a Computer Programmer) in Silicon Valley. A great number of “technical types” become very confused when the subject of conversation strays from their field of specialization (say, Computer Science) to politics, philosophy or any other subject (save, maybe the stock market). The same could be said of “business types”. Given the power such people exercise in our society, don’t you think it might be beneficial for them to have a wider perspective on the world? And yes, I do believe they might benefit from a “liberal education”.
Thomas, now there’s a coherent argument (I mean yours). I agree with your assumption — it would be a good if technical types had a wider perspective on the world. But I don’t think it’s obvious that such a wider perspective can be force-fed — that is, by making them take Class X and Class Y to fulfill a breadth requirement. Nor can I easily see why teaching “critical inquiry” (whatever that is) would make anyone more interested in new subjects, such as politics or philosophy. Perhaps MIT & Caltech’s approach is better: Have speaker series that explore non-technical topics.
Your criticism seems strange to me. Surely what’s bizarre about Levin’s speech is the claim that Yale delivers a liberal education. Are undergraduates required to develop an even slightly deep understanding of (or even a superficial exposure to) Latin? Logic? Calculus? Classical history? Rhetoric? Theology? the Western Cannon? Any thing at all which might be recognizable as a liberal education?
He is like a zombie, shambling along, clutching at his briefcase though he has long ago passed into a shadow state of existence where the briefcase and its contents are entirely meaningless.
Didn’t Alan Bloom state, and I agree with him, that there can be no cross cultural communication, the most there can be is inter cultural negotiation. U.S.A. has been quite good at high level negotiations for the past fifty years. Maybe that’s what Levin means.
I’m seeing it too, your rss feed (via google reader) is full of viagra spam, links inserted all over the posts.
If, at Yale or any other major university, “differences across cultures and boundaries” were truly examined in a spirit of “critical inquiry,” President Levin’s worst administrative nightmare would be realized.
I think Levin’s point is both coherent and important. As I understood it, what he is saying is that these days many people refer to things they read online as an authority that doesn’t particularly need to be questioned. The same goes for articles in journals, books, lectures, what have you. Often the language is obscure enough that people don’t have the tools to pick it apart; other times there is a tacit assumption that if it got edited and published it is probably correct.
Yet, the reality is that we are still capable of making mistakes, and the climate of unscrupulous attribution only means that they will go further and potentially inhibit more people. A liberal education, where you learn about some various ancient shit before getting down to business, helps you get into the habit of embedding considerations of context and perspective into your answer for “what does this really mean?”
Another facet of Levin’s statement is the ability to comprehend the differences between cultures. It almost goes without saying that most of us oversimplify the thought processes that take place in foreign lands that we don’t know that well. This has always been a tremendous problem for humans, and now that we have such a connected world, we have even more of a reason to learn how to respect each other.
I doubt that Levin uses a speechwriter, although perhaps someone helps him out after he has drafted his remarks. He’s an excellent speaker, besides being a fantastic president, and he is just as eloquent when he’s responding to questions and other spontaneous stimuli.
President Levin’s understanding of diversity appears to be roughly the same as the understanding of UC Berkeley administrators — to whom diversity meant the percentage of under-represented minority groups! The notion that people vary in other ways — such as how they think and what they are good at — didn’t cross their minds, judging by the fact that efforts to increase “diversity” never involved that. By promoting a college environment that tends to reward one sort of thinking — the kind of thinking that does well in liberal education classes — more than others, Levin is discouraging diversity of thought.
“What does “critical inquiry” have to do with understanding cultural differences?”
There is a long literature in the scholarship of teaching and learning which links critical inquiry and multiculturalism. In short, critical inquiry serves as a method of discovering and analyzing cultural assumptions that contribute to conflict, misunderstanding, and bias. President Levin may have been speaking in a way that was too specialized for a broad audience (and can surely be faulted for that if he was speaking to such an audience). However, you and your commenters are wrong to say he’s intellectually incoherent–you are merely unfamiliar with this area of scholarship. (I wouldn’t talk trash about psych theory before studying up on it.) Also, the quote clearly does not imply that MIT students can only solve easy problems. That’s ridiculous.
“By promoting a college environment that tends to reward one sort of thinking — the kind of thinking that does well in liberal education classes — more than others, Levin is discouraging diversity of thought.”
It seems you have a personal beef with this guy, which is justified for all I know. I can say, however, that liberal education opens up a lot space for diversity of thought–that is why many accuse it (with some justification) of promoting pure cultural relativism.
MH, you wrote: “You have a personal beef with this guy.” Not true. I’d never heard of him until now.
You also wrote: “The quote clearly does not imply that MIT students can only solve easy problems.” Here’s what Levin said: “the qualities of mind developed through liberal education are perhaps more indispensable than ever . . . to address problems for which there are no easy solutions.” You seem to have a different interpretation of “indispensable” than I do. MIT students do not get a liberal education.