American institutions of higher learning, perhaps especially the most selective of them, are failing to help students become tolerant, reflective, and respectful of different viewpoints.Intolerance and dogmatism are common, resulting in censorship, cancel culture, unreasonable limits on free speech, unlawful protests, and violence. Student dogmatism is enabled by faculty orthodoxies, of this, there is little doubt. As Jonathan Haidt and others have noted, what was a left-leaning trend is now ideological capture, with entire departments in the humanities and social sciences bereft of conservative or libertarian faculty. Some departments have a token, although beleaguered, conservative faculty member, often near career’s end, and without expectation of another conservative replacing them. This smacks of unfairness and bias in hiring and promotion, likely in graduate admissions, post-doctoral fellowships, scholarships, and perhaps undergraduate admissions.

　　It does not follow, just as such, that a department comprised entirely of liberal faculty results in a biased or dogmatic classroom. A liberal professor could create a syllabus inclusive of contrasting views while leading impartial and reasonable discussions. How a professor votes does not prevent him from assigning both Marx and Adam Smith, for example, or from allowing students to freely think for themselves. There is no a priori reason why a department must have conservative faculty in order to provide an unbiased curriculum, and certainly, no a priori reason why the faculty should be representative of the citizenry. Requiring such would be unreasonable and unfeasible, and would interfere with the freedom of a department to hire the best and most competent.

　　However, while there is no apriori reason to view a politically monolithic faculty as inimical to a balanced curriculum, we have overwhelming empirical reasons to be suspicious. If faculty were traditional scholars, by which I do not mean conservative, but rather, as Warren Treadgold suggests, those “interested in academics as such, not just as a vehicle for ideological expression and activism,” there would not be much of a problem.Liberal faculty could teach traditionally; some do so, willingly and impeccably. But many—too many—do not. Moreover, Treadgold notes a supply problem because “professors and administrators who are still interested in traditional education are becoming steadily fewer and less visible … near retirement and … have learned to keep quiet, since otherwise they would probably have been forced out of the profession long ago.” While there is no reason in principle to insist on intellectual diversity among the faculty, in reality, its absence turns out to matter quite a lot, as evidenced by the curricula and the students.

　　Given this unhappy reality, the rationale for viewpoint diversity seems obvious enough. If intellectual monopoly among the faculty is a significant cause of bias in the selection and teaching of texts, then unless and until conservatives attain critical mass among the faculty nothing like traditional scholarship is likely to occur. If the Left is going to proselytize, but conservatives are unwilling to do the same, we can still insist on access to the competitive market of ideas. It’s viewpoint diversity among the faculty or bust.

　　I see the reasons for this stance, but begrudgingly, offering faint cheers and choking a bit on the final “hurrah.” At the moment, viewpoint diversity is necessary triage, but it presupposes that education is a competition rather than an inquiry. On this conception, the teacher helps students access the best arguments for and against a position. Of course, students need to understand a text, but the central task is weighing and evaluating strengths and weaknesses so the student can judge for herself. This gauntlet model attacks and whatever survives is affirmed until suffering a knock-down blow. Take the Opposing Viewpoints series, for instance, in which relatively brief essays provide arguments for and against a position, without providing much access to the philosophical, anthropological, or economic commitments the arguments rely upon. Understanding is a necessary precondition, since we want to correctly grasp claims, but judgment is the point. Viewed this way, the Socratic method is a fitting model of instruction. The instructor probes for weakness, contradiction, lack of evidence, false assumptions, or absurd implications; if the class is lively other students will join the attack. The strong survive this lecture-hall-Darwinism, although judgments are only provisional and always threatened. Judging, to borrow a phrase from John Milbank, is “just suspended warfare.”

　　The marketplace of ideas is clearly preferable to overt advocacy and indoctrination, but Socrates, still the exemplar for liberal educators, did something quite different and far better. He allowed his interlocutors to share inquiry on the way to understanding. It might seem obvious that Socrates engages in the method I deny of him. When Polus leaps to defend Gorgias, with all the high spirit and energy implied by his name—a colt—Socrates refuses to entertain long speeches and insists on question and answer: “But if you have any interest in what has been said and wish to set it right, then, as I said just now, retract whatever you please, question and answer in turn … and refute me and be refuted.” Polus grudgingly accepts this constraint, chooses to question rather than be questioned, and eventually, albeit sulkily, admits his position is “fantastic,” prompting Socrates to tease, “We must disprove that.” Polus responds quite simply—“Yes, that is so,” apparently recognizing his loss. Perhaps. Or, it might be the dialogue shows us not the defeat of the arguments of Polus but rather the taming of Polus, the wild colt.

　　If we admit that we do not understand, interlocutors are no longer advocates or opponents but engaged in the work of shared inquiry.

　　It’s no small matter to accept the Socratic condition of inquiry. Socrates refuses sophistry, a supposed technique or method—Socrates says “routine”—of persuading others to accept judgments. Question and answer is not a non-sophistical method of refutation but, rather, as Eric Voegelin suggests, “the difference between existential honesty and intellectual argument.” Polus, the sophist, is ready to argue, but only in the way of “those who fancy they are refuting in the law courts. For there one group imagines it is refuting the other when it produces many reputable witnesses to support its statements whereas the opposing party produces but one or none.” Witnesses are marshaled in support of a statement, as when reasons are given to support a judgment, but Socrates is uninterested in this. Instead, he asks Polus to “try out what I consider the proper form of refutation” in which there is one, and only one witness, namely “the man” with whom Socrates is speaking, in this case, Polus. It is not the arguments of Polus under investigation but the person, Polus himself, and not about his intellectual prowess but his existential commitments and loves. At several points in the exchange, Polus posits his own tastes as the criterion of reality, as when he suggests that Socrates, like himself, would obviously envy the man who does whatever he wishes whether justly or not; to which Socrates provides no counter-argument at all but simply a rebuke: “Hush, Polus!”

　　Polus is tamed, broken in the old language of making a horse fit for the saddle, not by this or that argument but by the existential order Socrates represents: the order of inquiry. Especially in the early and early-middle dialogues, Socrates insists on his ignorance; he does not know and neither does the interlocutor. Socrates is not pushing arguments in defense of his judgments but so that his interlocutor admits their lack of knowledge. The interlocutor, if honest, is in the same place as Socrates, namely, that of not knowing but wanting to know. He is not persuading them to accept his claims, for he makes none, but tries to convert them to inquiry as a form of life.

　　Moral and existential tests occur throughout the dialogues. In exasperation, Meno accuses Socrates of “reducing others to perplexity” like the “sting ray” numbing those it stings. To this, Socrates responds, “It isn’t that, knowing the answers myself, I perplex other people. The truth is rather that I infect them also with the perplexity I feel myself.” Theatetus, described as resembling Socrates in looks and nobility, readily admits, “I cannot answer your question,” occasioning Socrates’ famous midwife analogy. He does not teach or give birth to ideas but in questioning helps others “bring to birth” the truths “they have discovered by themselves from within.” The same occurs in the dramatic exchange in Book I of the Republic between Socrates and Thrasymachus, ending not with Thrasymachus changing merely his views but by blushing, becoming “gentle … and no longer angry.” As a result, they become “friends.” The gentling of Thrasymachus is not the result merely of an intellectual conclusion; recall that Book I ends with Socrates’ reminder that they have erred in attempting to judge the worth of justice without knowing what it is. The Book ends in aporia, in puzzlement, or wonder, the starting point of all those who love wisdom. Liberal education begins with the admission of ignorance and progresses through inquiry aimed at understanding, not with the defense or attack of a thesis or judgment.

　　Rather than entering the classroom as if it is a war and battle—the opening words of Gorgias—while ensuring combatants have equal armaments, we would be better served to attempt a thorough understanding of the text or problem at hand, an attempt virtually guaranteed to reveal that we do not understand. If we admit that we do not understand, interlocutors are no longer advocates or opponents but engaged in the work of shared inquiry. Interlocutors mutually inquiring are friends with a common good—understanding—and intellectual exchange is an act of mutual assistance. Questions no longer intend to prove or disprove, establish or defeat, but to understand, which comes at no expense to the other.

　　Shared inquiry does not guarantee agreement and interlocutors will likely understand differently, and it is natural to explain the adequacy of one’s understanding. But explaining an account differs from marshaling reasons to support a judgment, especially when explaining to a friend who shared and helped the inquiry and its development. Points of departure allow interlocutors to “come to an understanding,” not necessarily an agreement, but a recognition of how the other understands the difference, and why. Dialogue is too often a bromide, code for empty discussion, but coming to an understanding remains an important task of the liberal arts. We are not all going to agree, but instead of defending, a Socratic conversation, at its best, negotiates until the parties agree what the disagreement is about; negotiates not in the sense of striking a deal but finding a way through the rapids. We are going to understand things differently, but we might try and reach an agreement about what the issue is before we launch into a passionate defense of our position, one which we do not fully understand anyway.

　　This is education as hermeneutical rather than methodical, conversational rather than argumentative, and Socratic rather than indebted to Mill. It is also closer to the ideal of liberal education than viewpoint diversity. I grant the need for viewpoint diversity given the current moment and the paucity of faculty willing to be genuinely Socratic, but we could at least admit this indicates disease rather than health, and nothing about the situation precludes the rest of us striving for the ideal.