What We Believe

May 16, 2021

Jonathan Holloway
President & University Professor, Rutgers

More than ever, we need colleges and universities to meet their fundamental duty if we are to have any hope of saving democracy.

There are very few institutions in our country that are charged with doing deeply contradictory things and finding a way to make them work. Colleges and universities must be the custodians of our national (and global) cultural heritage. We must be institutions that take very old ideas—ideas that have withstood the test of time and are seen as fundamental to human nature, to civil society, to democracy—and ensure that they are passed down to new generations of students. This is the work of canon formation and it is often seen as one of the bedrocks of a liberal arts education.

But what is the role of a canon in a deeply changing world, one that is getting smaller due to technological advances that simultaneously illuminate just how vast this planet is? What is the value of a canon that excludes people who speak other languages, come from different cultures, regions, and races…or lack a Y chromosome?

Again, this is where higher education has a special role to play. While we endeavor to protect our oldest and most valued ideas, we must also cultivate people who challenge that which we have considered sacred. We have an obligation to foster a research, teaching, and learning environment that is robust enough to welcome new ideas and perspectives, many of which will challenge the viability of the canon, and some of which will actually demonstrate that the canon needs to change.

Encouraging this kind of cognitive dissonance is the most powerful tool in our arsenal when it comes to preserving the democratic ideals that are supposed to be at the beating heart of our body politic. Throwing new ideas at the old is the best guarantee that we will develop citizens who have refined critical thinking skills and who have the capacity to be disruptive while also valuing deeply held beliefs that help a nation cohere in the face of challenges, whether they be generated from external antagonists or, in our present day, from internal sources of selfish disregard for the common good.

This essay, prepared for the Eagleton Institute of Politics’ “This I Believe” project, also appeared in the Star-Ledger on May 16, 2021.