Ok, ok - I'm a horrible snob.

But this book seems dead-on to me. The review in the NYT is also funny. This phrase, thought, is what struck me as something that plays out in my daily life - at work, in my classes, in my encounters with students, on TV.

"something different is happening: anti-intellectualism (the attitude that “too much learning can be a dangerous thing”) and anti-rationalism (“the idea that there is no such things as evidence or fact, just opinion”) have fused in a particularly insidious way."

I recall a time I had an argument with a friend about a particular issue. I love this friend dearly, so I'm going to attempt to change details. It wasn't about the friend, really, but the idea expressed. We were having a conversation with a conservative about the issue of obesity in America. The view of the conservative young man was that people were responsible for their own weight, health, etc - it was their fault for being fat, basically. This view has been repeated on the Republican campaign trail - we need to create health care programs that encourage people to take care of themselves, realize the costs, etc. My friend was adamant that it was the responsibility of the government to regulate the things that make people fat. She started vehemently defending the idea that it's the availability of junk food that is making people fat.

I later asked her if she had any data on the issue, because there could be many reasons why people, especially in certain populations, are overweight. Lack of safe places to exercise, cultural factors that encourage heaviness, and an overabundance of junk food could all be factors. Without some information, thought, her argument was based on little more than an opinion.

Now she turned her ire on me - it was clear she was passionate about the issue, but knew little about it. "I'm not going to do research on every issue, Nicole, this is just something I feel." I tried one last time to make my case that a little information would help her to make a good argument when confronted with conservative, "pull yourself up by the bootstrap" jerk-faces, but then I gave up.

I know not everyone can/has the desire to attend a graduate program, but I believe that graduate programs improve your writing skills, teach you to verify your opinions and views with research, and generally improve your ability to think critically about issues. I don't like it when people argue with me and they've done no research, and I've done plenty. Not that all research is right, but if you argue with a basis of "this is how I feel...." it's impossible to argue with that. And then I'm left feeling as if my years of work and study on a particular issue means nothing in our culture.

I have so much more to say now that I've started writing about this - moral relativism, the academic tendency to believe in quantitative rather than qualitative data - but I'll hold off.


"Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?" (Cohen, P. The New York Times. 2/14/08).