OF HUMAN DISCERNMENT: Emanuel says his class has failed!

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2023

Vice Provost, heal thyself: Professor Emanuel was shocked, just shocked, by something that happened last week. 

We refer to Ezekiel Emanuel, a good and decent person. According to the New York Times, he's also "a physician and the vice provost for global initiatives and a professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania."

Emanuel was shocked, just shocked, by something that happened last week. On Tuesday, he gave voice to his shock in an opinion column for the Times.

Judging from what he wrote for the Times, the professor was shocked to learn, for the very first time, that kids say the darndest things. Headline included, his column started like this:

The Moral Deficiencies of a Liberal Education

We have failed.

When a coalition of 34 student organizations at Harvard can say that they “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence” and students at other elite universities blame Israel alone for the attack Hamas carried out on Israelis on Oct. 7 or even praise the massacre, something is deeply wrong at America’s colleges and universities.

Students spouting ideological catchphrases have revealed their moral obliviousness and the deficiency of their educations. But the deeper problem is not them. It is what they are being taught—or, more specifically, what they are not being taught.

Just for the record, we regard the quoted statement by the Harvard students as being substantially dumb. 

As a general matter, we don't apply the term "stupid" to things people say. But except for that moral prohibition, we'd go ahead and say that the quoted statement tilted quite strongly that way. 

That said, the statement was signed by a bunch of college students. College students say the dumbest and darndest things, and they always have.

Professor Emanuel didn't know this? Where has this university leader been?

As we've already noted, Professor Emanuel is a good, decent person. That said, it seems to us that his column arrived at the New York Times from the dark side of Neptune.

Where exactly has this guy been? Just to establish his perspective, he went on to offer this bit of self-flagellation:

Certainly, not all students wear these moral blinders. But the fact that many students do, and that they are at some of the nation’s leading colleges and universities, should be a cause for profound concern across higher education.

Those of us who are university leaders and faculty are at fault. We may graduate our students, confer degrees that certify their qualifications as the best and brightest. But we have clearly failed to educate them. We have failed to give them the ethical foundation and moral compass to recognize the basics of humanity.

Speaking as a "university leader," Emanual says the moral blindness of those college students is somehow his fault.

He mentions the faculty too. It's his fault, and the fault of his wider class. 

That strikes us as a fairly dumb remark. As it turns out, it isn't just college students! Apparently, university leaders—even at "the nation's leading colleges and universities!"—will occasionally say the darndest things too!

As he continues, Emanuel says this: "The Hamas massacre is the easiest of moral cases." That, of course, is plainly true, depending on your wider moral perspective.

For today, let's set that question aside and turn to Emanuel' solution to the problem at hand. We refer to the moral blindness of those college students, a blindness which apparently isn't shared by their university leaders.

We agree! The statement by those Harvard students strikes us as basically dumb. But this strikes us as fairly dumb too—this attempt at a solution:

We in the academy need to look more deeply at how it is possible that so many undergraduates, graduate students, law students and faculty at our nation’s finest colleges and universities could have such moral blinders.

We need to ask ourselves: What is in our curriculums? What do we think it means to be well educated? What moral stands are we taking? The timidity of many university leaders in condemning the Hamas massacre and antisemitism more generally offers the wrong example. Leaders need to lead.

As a bioethicist, I support requiring students to take ethics classes. Some universities—mainly Catholic institutions, including Georgetown—still do. Having a two-course ethics requirement—one about general ethics and one about some specific area, such as military ethics, environmental and bioethics, ethics of technology, ethics of the market or political ethics—would be invaluable.

But ethics classes alone are insufficient to help students develop a clear moral compass so that they can rise above ideological catchphrases and wrestle intelligently with moral dilemmas.

As it turns out, Emanual isn't just a university leader; he's also a bioethicist. As such, he thinks students—mainly, those at "our nation's finest colleges"—should be required to take a couple of ethics classes—ethics classes designed by people of his own high caliber and of his own high class.

In Emanuel's view, this group has failed us up to now. It's now time for them to take over!

As he continues, Emanuel says the time has come to redesign college curriculums. What would be the purpose of that? Here's his simple statement:

There are many ways to construct a curriculum so we can certify graduates as “educated.”

He wants to be able to certify graduates as "educated!" That strikes us as a fairly dumb ambition. On occasion, bioethicists say the darndest things too!

We're going to walk today's discussion all the way back to 1965, to our own freshman year at a leading university. In that initial college year, we were exposed to what academic philosophy was secretly like. This happened in a one-semester class—Problems in Philosophy. 

In a yearlong freshman seminar—Theory of Emotions—we were also exposed to what academic psychology was secretly like. 

(Then too, there was Hum 5! Five hundred college freshmen and sophomores scribbling 500 sets of lecture notes. Did anyone ever read their lecture notes? If so, why?)

From that year forward, we've never really seen the day when Emanuel's class functioned with high distinction. In fairness, they have a very high self-regard. But they say and do the darndest things, and they generally stare off silently into the air when members of other ranking elites do so.

At this site, we've been writing about this cultural problem since 1998. We'll suggest that we've been writing about a type of intellectual blindness—a type of intellectual blindness which lurks in Emanuel's column.

Emanuel is a good, decent person. It seems to us that he has perhaps and possibly said an array of the arguably somewhat darndest things.

What in the world are we talking about? Tomorrow, we'll return to the narrower discussion we attempted at the start of this week. 

Perhaps next week, we'll discuss what we saw in the course of that first freshman year. Students were already saying the darndest things, but so were "university leaders!"

Tomorrow: Pamela Paul's (perfectly decent) moral precepts