There is an excellent read on how Richard
Hofstadter's idea of anti-intellectualism is still powerfully relevant today on
The Daily Beast.
Obsessing over an area of study’s practicality knows no ideological boundary. On a recent episode of Stossel, the libertarian host and his guests discussed the “college con”, paying particularly close attention to universities’ mandating that students take courses in fields that are not career oriented, such as philosophy, literature, and cultural studies. A few days after Fox Business Network aired the anti-intellectual episode of Stossel, liberal website Salon ran an article, “Just Say to No to College”, in which the writer dismissed the concepts of “critical thinking” and “intellectual enrichment” as “dubious buzzwords.” One might expect such Neanderthal sentiments in the locker room of high school freshman, but the irony of John Stossel—an intelligent man and fine journalist with degrees from Princeton and the University of Chicago—encouraging young people to reject education is equal parts absurdity and hilarity.
Hofstadter had a lot to say about the issues that I'm caught up in lately, and he said it well.
A university is not a service station. Neither is it a political society, nor a meeting place for political societies. With all its limitations and failures, and they are invariably many, it is the best and most benign side of our society insofar as that society aims to cherish the human mind.
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