Michael Roth and a Liberal Education

Michael Roth, the President of Wesleyan University, was in town last night speaking on liberal education, the topic of his new book, Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters.. He is a very erudite guy with an academic background in philosophy and history. He gives several MOOC courses, an excellent one on the Enlightenment.
He started his talk defining a liberal education as being liberating, animating, cooperating and instigating. One could argue with these requirements but in the first fifteen minutes he spoke of the notion of "liberating" through the writings of Thomas Jefferson. It was electrifying.

Education had an impaired history in Europe. European traditions gave the church or the family the responsibility for education, and the nature of instruction much depended on the denomination with which one was affiliated. But in America, education was political, integral with our revolutionary system. For Thomas Jefferson, education was the guardian of freedom. Cultivation of the capacity for independent judgment was necessary to inspire and defend a fledgling democracy devoted to the pursuit of happiness. Jefferson admired knowledge for its own sake but insisted that it also be useful to human progress. John Adams and Jefferson agreed on the necessity of education as a foundation for maintaining freedom. "Wherever a general knowledge and sensibility have prevailed among the people," Adams wrote, "arbitrary government and every kind of oppression have lessened and disappeared in proportion."  Man, Jefferson, believed, is most free when he is most nearly or completely self-sufficient, hence his education must be concerned with developing such inner resourcefulness. All citizens should develop this capacity, and some of them would go beyond it to develop lives in which they pursued ideas for their own sake. Jefferson's On the More General Diffusion of Knowledge proposed that citizens should learn the basic skills for preserving their freedom, for conducting their affairs, and for continuing to learn. "If we think them [the people] not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education." He was trying to create a system that would find gifted young men who might otherwise be overlooked because they didn't come from the right families. "The best geniuses will be raked from the rubbish annually." Imagine such a nation, growing with its citizens, each one growing in knowledge and liberty, intertwined.

It was inspiring. Roth was almost evangelical in his channeling Jefferson. I anxiously checked my watch; how could he keep this up? Everyone was on the edge of his seat when he said, "And now everyone is thinking the same two words...." I froze. What had I missed? Alexander Hamilton? What was Rousseau's first name? Roth answered his question. "Sally Hemmings!" Huh? The time honored and time-warped hypocrisy? Sally Hemmings?

I like this guy and I like his school. But in the midst of this inspiring discussion he must, must, throw in a anachronistic non sequitur. Like many of our educational elite, he likely brings this ghastly companion everywhere he goes.

This nation must get beyond this. I'm sure Mr. Jefferson was wrong about a lot of things. My solution is simple: We pardon both O.J and Jefferson and move on.