Colleges and Universities are Good (revisited)

An article in the Washington Post this morning discussed the gap between how people in the U.S. see themselves and how people around the world see the U.S. and its residents. (Trump is Making Americans See the U.S. the Way the Rest of the World Already Did.)

While I think the author is a little careless in her generalizations, I generally agree with her main points that far too many residents of the U.S. are frightfully out of touch with the rest of the world. Certainly the U.S. public educational system does not dedicate great resources to understanding people from around the world.  I would not write a blog post just to agree with her, nor to take her to task for being a little careless in generalizing.  But towards the end of the article, the author makes a statement that just makes me angry for its basic acceptance of the anti-intellectual trend that is polluting public discourse in the U.S. at present:

many other average Americans with dangerously naive ideas about themselves and their country grow up to become teachers, foreign correspondents, presidents. What they did not learn as children will not be cured by what they learn at elite universities, in self-regarding metropolitan centers or in graduate schools that for the most part tell them that the United States is the center of the planet and that they are the smartest on it. 

Do I think there are many Americans (U.S. residents) who have dangerously naive views of themselves and their countries? Absolutely, I do.  But do I agree that such dangerously naive views cannot be cured by universities or graduate schools or metropolitan centers? Absolutely not.  The view that colleges and universities are part of the problem, or at least are no help in dealing with it, is pernicious anti-intellectual propaganda that serves conservative and Anglo-centric perspectives.

Firstly, let’s just stipulate that arrogance or hubris are not good. It’s good to believe in oneself, to feel proud of who and what you are, but it’s not good to be arrogant about it. It’s one thing to believe in oneself, and it’s quite another to believe oneself superior to another. And yet another thing to let that self-regard keep you from learning new things because you think you know better.

Secondly, I’m going to assert that the general idea of American Exceptionalism is either trite or inappropriate arrogance.  If we say that Americans are different from the rest of the world in that they are American and everyone else is not American, it is trite and tautological (the band Camper Van Beethoven sang “If you didn’t live here in America, you’d probably live somewhere else” in the song “Good Guys and Bad Guys”).  If Americans are different in some other way, then that characteristic should be something real that we can identify and define. We could then see if Americans are actually different (and potentially superior) in that way. The “American Exceptionalism” generally posited by the political right in the US is little more than an arrogant “Americans are better because we’re American,” without any clarifying or signifying characteristic that makes Americans better. If American exceptionalism said “Americans are better because they’re richer” (or smarter, or prettier, etc.), then we could discuss whether that was true using empirical evidence. And we could discuss whether being richer/smarter/prettier/etc. really translated to being better in any significant sense (what makes people “better” or “worse”, anyway?). If American Exceptionalism means “Americans make the best widgets,” well, if there is some way of proving that America makes the best widgets, then I’m all for American Exceptionalism. If American exceptionalism just means “we’re better because we’re American,” then that’s unfounded arrogance.  To the extent that American Exceptionalism is tied to the idea of Manifest Destiny (which depends on in the idea of the superiority of whites and Christians, and is a version of the “white man’s burden” myth), I reject it utterly.

It is possible to find arrogance everywhere, and maybe you do find it more often in elite universities and in “self-regarding metropolitan centers.” But what I would ask is: where are U.S. residents likely to find out about what people around the world think of the U.S.? You certainly could move to a foreign country, as the author of the article did (though living in a foreign country is no cure for arrogance, as colonial occupiers have demonstrated for centuries). Or, you could go to one of the places in America where you can meet people who aren’t from America.  You don’t have to leave America to meet people from around the world. You can learn from a Turk while living in Istanbul, but you can also learn from a Turk living in Berkeley, California while attending university. (One of the sloppy generalizations in the article is the notion that everyone in the U.S. is oblivious to what people in the rest of the world think. There are lots of people living in the U.S. who immigrated from other lands, or whose parents immigrated from other lands. Such people, by virtue of both personal experience and social connections, have a damn good idea of what people outside the US think of people inside the US. I get that the constraints of the article size limit the attention that an author can give to saying “I want to talk about something common in the US, but certainly not universal,” but the generalization is still sloppy: lots of Americans know what the rest of the world thinks of the US.)

Metropolitan centers are known for diversity of population, and this diversity is reflected in political realities. Who voted for Trump and blindness to the outside world? Not metropolitan centers. Metropolitan centers voted for the person who had served as Secretary of State for Barack Obama, who was widely admired outside the U.S. Metropolitan centers voted for the politician who believed in climate change, like the rest of the world believes in climate change. Metropolitan centers also voted for the politician who supported immigration, which reveals an inherent openness to new peoples with different ideas about the U.S. (An aside: to call the metropolitan centers “self-regarding” is to accuse them of arrogance. It’s an unjustified insult and a silly generalization. Where ever you go, some people will hold arrogant and unjustified pride in their homes. But in most places, there are justified grounds for pride. And in some cases—New York, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, and several other major U.S. cities—a certain self-regard is not out of place. The great cities of the U.S. rival the great cities of the rest of the world. Sure, Istanbul has thousands of years of history, and New York only a few centuries, but New York was a world cultural center of power rivaled by only a short list of other cities in the history of the world. In the middle of the twentieth century, New York was quite arguably the greatest city in the world. Washington, D.C. wielded military might unrivaled perhaps in history. Los Angeles and Hollywood influenced people around the world.)

Colleges and universities are also good places to meet people from around the world and to learn how they see the world.  If you go to college or university with an unshakeable belief in the inherent superiority of Americans (or white Christian Americans), well, college and university may not change you.  But such views are hardly common on university campuses (and not surprisingly, the GOP and conservative media often complain about the views that are expressed on U.S. university campuses).  University campuses try to harbor diverse views because an underlying view of research is that diversity of views helps develop debate. Universities almost always have foreign students and often foreign professors.  And again, the voting record clearly demonstrates that college and universities hold views that are more interested in understanding the outside world, and more focused on interacting with people in the outside world as equal partners, rather that as inferiors lacking whatever it is that is supposed to make Americans exceptional.  Is American Exceptionalism espoused by many on U.S. campuses? Well, generally professors and students both vote Democratic far more often than Republican, suggesting that the Republican appeal to American Exceptionalism isn’t generating enthusiasm on campuses. It should be noted that researchers—most professors at universities—are almost always working with scholars around the world, and they are trying to understand the ideas of the people with whom they work. Scholars may focus on their scholarship, but they’re not completely cut off from the rest of the world. Colleges often send students abroad in addition to bringing in students from overseas.

The metropolitan centers and colleges/universities voted for the candidate with the less insular views; they voted in favor of more interaction in the world, and less of an idea of “American Exceptionalism.”  Who did vote for the insular candidate? Who voted for American Exceptionalism? Not the metropolitan areas or colleges/universities.

So, Ms. Hansen, if your concern is for throwing off the American-centric views that disturb you, then metropolitan centers and colleges are the most likely places where someone will be cured of those views, short of going and living abroad. Since the rest of the world probably won’t let 300 million U.S. residents come live for a year or a decade, those colleges and universities and metropolitan centers are the best hope for curing Americans of their self-centered views. In the long run, sure, it would be great to change elementary and secondary education in the U.S. for more awareness of the wider world. But at present, colleges and universities and metropolitan areas are the best hopes for the cure you seek to American blindness. Colleges and universities are good.

Update/Addendum: Another place you can find out what people outside the U.S. think of people inside the U.S. is on the web, even on U.S.-based publications, as with this article written by a Mexican. Truth is, it's easy to learn what people think if you want to learn. But you have to go to places where there are different voices to be heard--like metropolitan centers and institutions of higher learning.