Civil Society Brunch: "The Liberal Arts and The Myth of Thinking for Yourself"
The Civil Society Initiative at Washington University in St. Louis will host a public lecture and brunch on February 28, 2025, 10-11am, at the Charles F. Knight Executive Education and Conference Center, Room 220. Simon Feldman (Connecticut College) will give a talk entitled "The Liberal Arts and The Myth of Thinking for Yourself." (An abstract is below.) Professor Feldman isAssociate Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Connecticut College, where he teaches courses such as Ethics, Philosophy of Law, Philosophy of Education and Feminist Philosophy. He is the author of Against Authenticity: Why You Shouldn't Be Yourself (Lexington Books, 2014). His current manuscript is entitled Defending Indoctrination: The Liberal Arts, and The Myth of Thinking for Yourself.
All are welcome; please RSVP below if you plan to attend.
Abstract: The current political culture war over higher education is often framed as a debate about whether or not colleges and universities are indoctrination mills, churning out "woke" knee-jerk progressive students, little more than copies of the faculty who are "teaching" them. This talk investigates whether it is or should be the aim of liberal arts education to cultivate students' ability to think for themselves and proposes, provocatively, that this is not the best framework for defending the mission or practices of liberal arts institutions.
The Civil Society Initiative is sponsored by the Frick Initiative and the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy.