An Allergy to Thought?

I was taken this evening by the following quote from John Sexton, President of New York University. I like very much his expression of an allergy to thought rampant in America. Of course people are thoughtful. But the kind of thought Sexton refers to -- analytical thought -- is indeed in short supply. Sexton further stated that universities are the key to restoring or creating healthy discourse in our lives.

Here is the quote as printed on the web site of Bill Moyers Journal.


"This is a pattern that I see: an allergy to thought, to complexity [and] nuance - a kind of collapse into an intellectual relativism where opinions become fact... It's a dangerous thing... I think there's a growing hostility to knowledge in this country... Our national progress is being retarded because we have fallen into this discourse by slogan. We have fallen into this relativism where it's a conversation to stop and say, "Well, that's your opinion. [This is] my opinion...' Go back to the Athenian idea of political speech - it was a search for good answers. We're so far from that today that it's almost ludicrous for me to bring that up, but I want to remind us... We don't listen well as a society. When we listen, we listen in feedback loops to people who are likely to say what it is we think is right... We're in the process, it seems to me, because of this allergy to complexity and nuance, of devaluing the importance of education... I think universities are the last, best hope for pushing back against this because what we do is complexity and nuance."