"If you cannot see your fellow students, or colleagues, as engaged in a common and intrinsically human search for knowledge — maybe even wisdom — then you will have no incentive to cross the boundaries of race, gender, or culture."

Renewing the University

ALAN JACOBS

"If you cannot see your fellow students, or colleagues, as engaged in a common and intrinsically human search for knowledge — maybe even wisdom — then you will have no incentive to cross the boundaries of race, gender, or culture. You will in the end have no incentive to cross the boundaries of your narrow little self. You may occasionally speak the language of "alliance," but you will define your allies as those who obey your demands. And, in times of conflict, it will be characteristic of your stance toward the world to make demands.

This is a way to live. But it is not a good way to live, and it exacts a heavy toll on everyone involved — especially the students, who postpone beyond any reasonable point that vital achievement Richard Rodriguez described: becoming "assimilated into public society" in such a way as to make possible "the achievement of public individuality." If our young people are going to see that there are less confrontational alternatives, something other than zero-sum games, they will need instruction in the humanities. Some of us are prepared to give it."