Iconoclast: Ideas That Have Shaped The Culture Wars

By Mark Halloran

The culture wars are raging again. The term, which gained popular usage in the United States in the 1920s to describe the ideological divide between those with progressive versus conservative beliefs, now pits a coalition of conservatives and classical liberals against those who adhere to a far-left, postmodern ideology. Iconoclast: Ideas That Have Shaped the Culture Wars is an anthology of essays by, and interviews with, some of the world’s most prominent public intellectuals on many of the social, cultural, philosophical, scientific, and political issues that have defined the culture wars of the last two decades. In an age of post-truth, the ideas expressed in this anthology will challenge many commonly held ideological beliefs. The modern culture wars are more than just a battle between the left and the right; they are a desperate struggle over which ideas are politically, socially, and morally acceptable – and who may express those ideas. It is a war over the definition of truth itself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Academica Press
• Release date: Jul 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781680532685

Book preview

On COVID19 and Times of Plague

Based on an interview with Nicholas A. Christakis

Your arrow for my tears – Homer, The Iliad

Mark Halloran: I want to focus on your book Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live,¹ but I did want to speak to you first about the culture of Yale. I know that you’ve been prominent in the free speech debates, both at Harvard and Yale, and you were involved in a fairly notorious incident a few years ago, in relation to Halloween costumes.² And recently, there was a speech given at Yale by a visiting psychiatrist which was about ‘The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind.’³ In terms of the cultural moment that we’re having, what is your best explanation of this?

Nicholas Christakis: First of all, I would say that elite universities in rich democracies, like the United States, are, in some ways, a hallmark of our civilization. They are remarkable institutions that are worth protecting and worth preserving. And their mission, in my view, is the preservation, production and dissemination of knowledge. That’s the mission of the university; that’s what it’s supposed to do. That’s not the mission of courts. That’s not the mission of the legislature. That’s not the mission of the market. All those institutions have other missions. But the mission of a university is the preservation, production and dissemination of knowledge.

Therefore, we want a set of circumstances that optimizes the furtherance of that mission. And that requires, in my view, a deep commitment to classic liberalism, which involves a set of principles that, among other things, address the importance of free and open expression. And it’s not just about protecting individuals from the actions of the institution or protecting citizens from the actions of the government, as the first amendment does in the United States. It’s about the affirmative effort of everyone in a university to create a culture in the university (or in the wider society), that privileges free and open expression. That is the sort of culture that universities should strive for.

If you’re so confident in the truth of your ideas: engage with your opponents and win the battle of ideas. Don’t silence them. And this, of course, goes back to the classic J.S. Mill, statement: ‘He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.’* How can you actually be sure in your beliefs if you do not engage with people who oppose your beliefs? In fact, your opponents are providing you a service. This is why, for example, in the martial arts, you bow to your opponents before you spar. You’re grateful to them for helping you become better. That’s how you become better - by sparring with them. And, I would suggest, the same goes with intellectual sparring.

The fundamental commitment, in my view, at any serious university - and in fact, my belief is that this commitment is also wise and helpful for our broader society - is to free and open expression. This is crucial to the production of knowledge. Universities do basic research for generations. The fact that we have mRNA vaccines that are available to us right now to face the COVID19 pandemic, which has depended on 30 years of basic research that came before it, is an illustration of this. It is not only because we are rich countries. It is also because we want scientists to seek and speak the truth. Unlike what happens sometimes in other authoritarian countries, as in Stalinist Russia, or nowadays in Communist China, where oftentimes, scientists there will be shut up. Their speech about what they’re seeing or discovering is sometimes quashed.

So those commitments to free expression are crucial to our ability to be rich and powerful, to produce knowledge that ultimately drives our ability to be wealthy and strong. So, these are deep and fundamental and important commitments to free and open expression that we should have in our institutions and in our broader society. Incidentally, I discussed the reasons and ways we evolved to learn from each other, precisely to derive such benefits, in my book Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society.⁴

Therefore, with respect to the specific example you gave of this visiting professor who was invited to campus at Yale, and I think the title of her talk, was this something like ‘the psychopathic tendency of the white mind?’

The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind.

Yes, I myself would not have invited her to come to give a talk. I would regard that title, and the description of the talk, as ideological. But I would not prohibit anyone else on campus from inviting such a person to give such a talk, nor, if such a person were invited, would I oppose her speaking. I would not say she should be disinvited either, after having been invited in the first place. However, I would push back powerfully at her ideas, which I reject as racist and as incoherent. And I would ask: why would an institution whose fundamental mission is the preservation, production, and dissemination of knowledge, why is this institution devoting so much effort to an ideological project such as instantiated by this person? I would regard that ideological project as being separate from the fundamental mission of the university.

Universities during the McCarthy era had the problem of conservatism and also almost criminalizing left-wing thought. There was a right-wing suppression of free speech, but the issue for you is that you’re trying to create a dialogue. It’s been described in lots of different ways in terms of postmodernist thought, identity politics etc. Really, when I watched you in the video with the students, where you’re trying to communicate with them, it occurred to me that you’re trying to create a dialogue and dialectic, and they were more interested in a monologue.

Yes, well, I generally do not discuss the events of 2015,⁵ because they are so in the past now. My commitment to liberalism is very long standing, and goes back decades. But I’m politically on the left. Of course, not that that matters. But I think of myself as a classical liberal.

But then you look at the danger of this illiberalism in society because you brought it up in your book Apollo’s Arrow. You talked about hospital administrations and bureaucracies trying to silence healthcare workers. I once spoke with the late intelligence researcher, James Flynn, and I said to him, I wonder if the university has ever stably been a place of free expression and thought?

Like all institutions, some institutions fail to honor their fundamental commitments. For example, the judiciary is supposed to be an impartial arbiter of justice. But we know that sometimes judges are corrupt. It’s less common in our society than in some others, but even in our society, this happens. So, we have the fundamental commitment of equal justice under law. But any institution is capable of failing to honor its commitments. And so, you’re absolutely right that universities do, from time to time, fall down on their commitments. And as you pointed out, this occurred during the McCarthy era. But I would hope they would not. And I think it requires vigilance on the part of the citizenry and on the part of responsible leaders of our institutions to honor those commitments. But it’s difficult. The reason we create principles is so that, when we’re stressed, we don’t have to act impulsively. We are guided by