How Universities Have Abandoned the Search for Truth

with John McWhorter, Cornel West, and Robert George

Cornel West and Robbie George argue that we need more diversity of thought in universities. Its absence, they argue, has abetted the collapse of the search for truth. But, I ask them, doesn’t the search for truth require the exclusion of certain paradigms? If a position is demonstrably wrong—like the crackpot notion that the Earth is flat—we usually don’t think there’s an obligation to take it seriously. That act of exclusion is an inherent part of how the search for truth constitutes itself. But there are more subtle, more debatable acts of exclusion than the flat earth example. Who decides what gets excluded? And how do they go about deciding it?

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