Artfully Mindful

Truth, Tolerance, and the Threat to Intellectual Life in America

• D. R. Thompson

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What happens when political power directly challenges academic freedom? Fresh from a six-month sabbatical from podcasting, I'm witnessing concerning parallels between McCarthyism and the current political climate's impact on American universities.

The Trump administration's approach to higher education—slashing research funding and criticizing intellectual exploration—threatens to fundamentally alter the academic landscape. Working within this system, I see firsthand how political pressure creates a chilling effect on the free exchange of ideas. When politicians dictate what professors can teach and researchers can study, we lose something essential to our society's ability to grow and adapt.

America has always maintained a complex relationship with intellectual life. Our nation's founding by religious reformers embedded certain anti-intellectual tendencies that persist today, helping explain why critiques of "wokeness" resonate with many Americans. The current tensions reflect a deeper conflict between worldviews—one that sees truth as discovered through dialogue and critical examination versus approaches that insist on singular, unquestioned truths.

The university should remain a space where diverse perspectives can interact productively—where Christian, Islamic, Jewish, scientific, and humanistic viewpoints can be explored with mutual respect. This tolerance for intellectual diversity doesn't threaten society; it strengthens it. Rather than imposing ideological constraints through funding cuts, we should be fostering environments where Socratic questioning thrives. Our intellectual richness as a nation depends on our willingness to protect these spaces of open inquiry.

What kind of society do we want to become? One that fears challenging questions, or one that embraces them as the path to greater understanding? The choice we make now will shape American intellectual life for generations to come.

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Speaker 1:

Hi, don Thompson here. I've been taking a sabbatical for the last six months. I thought I would check in. I'm not saying I'm going to necessarily restart the podcast, but I wanted to check in and let you know what was going on with me and give you an update on both my recent doings and some observations I've had in the last few months related to, of course, the recent election of Mr Trump back to university to do some teaching. This is impacting me, or can impact me, directly Not really directly so far, but it could happen, because Mr Trump seems to be adamant about criticizing the universities and critiquing their particular approach to things. So I've got a rather interesting take on it.

Speaker 1:

I do believe, if I'm to be honest, that I do think that there are some criticisms of university, of the current intellectual life in the United States and how that kind of plays itself out in universities. I think there is something to be said for the conservative take, and I'll get into more what I mean by that in a second. But overall I would say that you want to keep the intellectual life at universities free. You don't want to be having the state imposing their ideas about what should and should not be taught at universities. That's really the job of faculty and it's really the job of the intellectual community to decide what they want to do. I mean, you know, when you start having state administrators and politicians deciding what the curriculum at colleges and universities are going to be, I think it's a bad proposition from the get-go. You're going to end up with issues.

Speaker 1:

Interestingly, diana and I just watched the live presentation of Good Night and Good Luck, which is George Clooney's play about Edward R Murrow. It was a play that he did and it was being performed on Broadway. That was a sort of an adaptation of a film that he had actually done of the same title a few years ago. So what he did is he took the same idea, basically reviewing Edward R Murrow's response to Joseph McCarthy related to his take on communism and his take on calling out certain people for being communists and bringing them in front of his House of Un-American Activities Committee and basically destroying their careers. More or less, that's what he was doing for a lot of people.

Speaker 1:

So we're finding ourselves in a very similar situation to McCarthyism with Mr Trump, and it is definitely putting a dampening effect on the university system and also a very you know, a bottom line impact, frankly, because he's cutting a lot of funding to particularly some of the elite universities, like where I am working now, which is involved in a lot of research, and he has cut funding substantially to the university for that research and it may impact me, but my particular area is a little bit out of the scientific arenas, more in the humanities, so so far I haven't really been impacted and I might, in fact, be benefited because there's been a hiring freeze where I'm working and therefore they may need me. I don't know To continue because I'm a United States citizen. I'm not, you know, they might look at me as an asset, being a US citizen and being already hired, and they have me. So we'll have to see how it plays out, but regardless, I would think that the you know, the impingement you might say of the Trump administration on the university system in the United States is not a great thing and we really need to keep an eye on it. I think basically we should. There should be some pushback from the faculty and from the universities, and Harvard, in fact, has done some of that already and hopefully it'll continue, with other universities pushing back against this really infringement upon their rights.

Speaker 1:

All of that said, I think that, interestingly enough, as I've noted in other podcasts leading up to the end of the year last year, was that I think the conservatives have a point or two, you know, and it's because they have a point or two that they can move forward some of these ideas. But, as is usually the case with these kinds of situations, there's overreach and they're overdoing it and they're stepping too far and doing way too much and too fast too much, and it's not really well thought out. And it's not really well thought out. It's just sort of a knee-jerk emotional response to certain issues related to a perceived in quotes awokeness in the university system, without really analyzing and parsing out. Well, what does that actually mean? What does this awokeness have to do with? And I've actually put some thought to it it actually involves really a little bit of study and research.

Speaker 1:

You're looking at the history of intellectual life in the United States. Now, the United States has not been the hallmark of intellectual activity in terms of the humanities. A lot of the ideas that have been on the forefront of moving the, that have been on the forefront of moving the humanities forward from a critical standpoint, from a theoretical standpoint, have come from Europe. So when we think of key thinkers such as Marx and Freud and Nietzsche and then followed by thinkers like Foucault and Jean-Paul Sartre and people like that, those thinkers but I have to say in fairness that a lot of intellectual horsepower in my field again communications has come out of the Americans since the 1960s or so. But the heavyweights, you know, you still have to look to Europe for the heavyweight people, I think. I mean, you know it really depends on how you parse it philosophically, but I would think that the major philosophical traditions, even in the modern era I would say 19th century, 20th century come from Europe and so the Americans for the most part, in general as a rule have not been that impactful. However, that said, they've been very impactful on the scientific front and in the research fields related to health and science and so on and so forth.

Speaker 1:

But there tends to be and is in this country a tendency to have somewhat of an anti-intellectual proposition, which historically makes sense when you look at how the country was founded, as basically a revolt against some of the religious people in the European context who were considered to be conservative and also considered to be not really looking at the tradition of Christianity in a true way, what the reformers would call a purer way. So you have this whole revolt against the Catholic Church and against other churches in Europe and a formation, a reformation of the church. And so the fact that the United States was based upon these reformist people, these very, you might say in many ways puritanical or fundamentalist Christian people, that still today has an impact to this day, because there's still many remnants of that sort of fundamentalist viewpoint sort of fundamentalist viewpoint, you might say an anti-intellectual viewpoint that are still evident in our culture, in American culture. So it's sort of understandable that ultimately this sort of reaction would occur, particularly when they see that the academics are overreaching their boundaries and having an impact on their culture, their Christian culture, in a way that they don't necessarily like. And so some of the ways that that has been interpreted in so-called critique of the liberal wokeness and what that means when you parse it. To me what it means is that it's to be, in essence, control seat of life and that you really need to defer to what they would say would be the word of God, the Bible, without really applying any kind of a critical framework to that analysis. I mean the critical framework to that analysis immediately takes to the Christian, to the believer, you into a territory of wokeness.

Speaker 1:

The journalistic effort and the journalistic historically puts the journalist in the realm of the left, in the realm of the woke, according to the conservatives, because it's the worldview that is really being critiqued here. The worldview of the journalist is a humanistic worldview that comes out of a scientific mindset that understands, or at least attempts to understand, that there is some kind of an objective reality to be looked at. So the idea of an objective reality to be looked at is not necessarily run in sync with what the Christian worldview might be, what the religious worldview might be, who might think or who might interpret the world in a completely different way, through a lens of spirituality, through the lens of the religion. And I've had conversations with people on Facebook that you know shows me that this is the case. In India and Pakistan you have so many people that are incredibly religious and I would say some of them are intellectually interesting and spiritual at the same time, but sometimes they become rather fundamentalist. So I have Facebook conversations with people trying to just tell them you know, I think that you know your view, if you propagated it throughout the world would be a theocratic kind of fascism.

Speaker 1:

I mean, it's just, it's not, it wouldn't work. You know that mean when you parse it out in terms of what is spirituality, is it possible that there are other dimensions of reality? Well, you have to leave yourself open to that possibility, and certainly the physicists do leave us open to ponder that possibility that there are other dimensions and you can have spiritual dimensions. Why not? I mean, you can't limit it really intellectually. But that doesn't mean in this world today, in this particular template of a world that we exist in, that you're going to have, you know, people able to live up to whatever your particular worldview is and what your particular perspective is of what true in quotes, spirituality or religion is. I mean, there are so many different opinions, so it's obvious that it wouldn't work. So what happens is that people are unable to accept the fact that you know we should just be able to live together in tolerance and it's okay that people have another perspective on things.

Speaker 1:

Everybody doesn't have to think the same way. As a matter of fact, within the intellectual community in university, you don't want people to think the same way. You want people to have a diversity of opinion. You want to have a discussion, and so the discussion, through the discussion process, you can discover something called truth, or at least indications of what truth might be. You might not, you know, nail it exactly, because there's so many philosophical implications to even discussing truth. I mean, whose truth? Does truth abide in language? Is it outside of language? You know there's all kinds of considerations in terms of just well, what the heck is truth? So, that said, I mean there are.

Speaker 1:

In a university setting, you can have all kinds of discussions about truth and related to particular theories about truth, and you can discuss those theories, you can showcase them. You can showcase them like you would showcase fashion at a fashion show. You know person that's putting on framing theory and other person's putting on uses and gratification theory and other person is putting on crisis communication theory, and you go on and on. These are just different perspectives on life. It doesn't mean that they are right or true absolutely. It just means that they're a different perspective and out of that perspective you might gain some insight. So I feel that out of the Christian perspective and out of that perspective you might gain some insight. So I feel that out of the Christian perspective, you can gain insights Out of the Islamic perspective. You can gain insights Out of the Jewish perspective. You can gain insights.

Speaker 1:

I'm very open-minded, I like to listen to a lot of people's viewpoints and perspectives, because I do believe that you can come to some sense of well, what is the truth behind all of these perspectives? What is the common values, what is the common themes that come up and indeed I think that there could be common themes that come up and also you get into the realm of the spiritual, you get into the realm of a word called love. Okay, so now love is not typically discussed in an academic setting, as they're all busy discussing things outside of the emotional, but indeed it is perhaps, you know, at the end of the day, this word love that is crucial to the entire exercise. If we actually love and you're tolerant of people, if you accept that you know people can have different viewpoints and different worldviews and that you can tolerate that, then that's great. But what's happening with the Trump administration, frankly, is that there's an intolerance. There's an intolerance and that reflects itself directly in the funding of universities. It also reflects itself in their particular worldview about what people should or should not believe. And if you have the fundamentalists running the show, you're going to have problems, I guarantee it. It's going to be a diminishment of the intellectual richness of the United States. I mean, I'm not the only one saying this, of course.

Speaker 1:

There are other people that are commenting upon this potential for decline in the United States based upon some of these policies, and so I would urge the administration and those who are listening to have a tolerant attitude and to fund it to the extent that it promotes a general atmosphere of tolerance, atmosphere of tolerance of discussion, of inquiry and of coming to almost like a Socratic questioning. The philosopher Socrates was known more for asking questions and for answering questions. He would ask questions and in today's world, you know, to pay for professors or to give universities an environment to do this. You need to fund the operations of such things, you need to pay for the salaries of faculty, you need to enable that exercise going to look like what that discussion is going to entail. What are the parameters of that discussion outside of? Well, perhaps you don't want to have hateful speech? Well, of course you don't want that.

Speaker 1:

So hopefully I'm making my point here, but I did want to check in and let you know that my perspective on the current assault you might say on the university system is that it's not a great idea. You know they should be much more open-minded and flexible In terms of funding and how that happens. And you know Trump and company are saying that we don't have the money anymore. You know I've got into this and other writings on the internet and other podcasts a little bit, but you know money is a human construct. I mean you can come up with the money. As long as you can avoid inflation, you're going to be okay. So with a little bit of intelligence you can create money and we have been for, you know, many, many decades creating money and it hasn't really it's created inflation yeah, absolutely it has. But also salaries have risen and you kind of have this game of increase of the money supply and increase of inflation. Salaries hopefully keep up to the same level and obviously they haven't necessarily done that all the time.

Speaker 1:

But you know, perhaps there needs to be an international conclave of rethinking the financial system of the world and looking at it holistically. I don't know if that's going to happen anytime soon. Rather than going to war with each other, maybe we should be getting together and talking about how to recreate a new financial order that would be more equitable. If we could do that, then perhaps we would have a better world and one that would be amenable to open-mindedness, to tolerance, to mindfulness, to love, and I think that would be a great thing. Okay, thanks for listening. I'll check in perhaps in another couple of months. We'll see how it goes. Right now, I'm going to be in the thick of spinning up my next course here, my next semester at university, so I'll be a busy little bee no-transcript.