Think for yourself

Some Thoughts and Advice for Our Students and All Students August 28, 2017 https://jmp.princeton.edu/announcements/some-thoughts-and-advice-our-students-and-all-students We are scholars and teachers at Princeton, Harvard, and Yale who have some thoughts to share and advice to offer students who are headed off to colleges around the country. Our advice can be distilled to three words: Think for yourself. Now, that might sound easy. But you will find—as you may have discovered already in high school—that thinking for yourself can be a challenge. It always demands self-discipline and these days can require courage. In today’s climate, it’s all-too-easy to allow your views and outlook to be shaped by dominant opinion on your campus or in the broader academic culture. The danger any student—or faculty member—faces today is falling into the vice of conformism, yielding to groupthink. At many colleges and universities what John Stuart Mill called “the tyranny of public opinion” does more than merely discourage students from dissenting from prevailing views on moral, political, and other types of questions. It leads them to suppose that dominant views are so obviously correct that only a bigot or a crank could question them. Since no one wants to be, or be thought of, as a bigot or a crank, the easy, lazy way to proceed is simply by falling into line with campus orthodoxies. Don’t do that. Think for yourself. Thinking for yourself means questioning dominant ideas even when others insist on their being treated as unquestionable. It means deciding what one believes not by conforming to fashionable opinions, but by taking the trouble to learn and honestly consider the strongest arguments to be advanced on both or all sides of questions—including arguments for positions that others revile and want to stigmatize and against positions others seek to immunize from critical scrutiny. The love of truth and the desire to attain it should motivate you to think for yourself. The central point of a college education is to seek truth and to learn the skills and acquire the virtues necessary to be a lifelong truth-seeker. Open-mindedness, critical thinking, and debate are essential to discovering the truth. Moreover, they are our best antidotes to bigotry. Merriam-Webster’s first definition of the word “bigot” is a person “who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices.” The only people who need fear open-minded inquiry and robust debate are the actual bigots, including those on campuses or in the broader society who seek to protect the hegemony of their opinions by claiming that to question those opinions is itself bigotry. So don’t be tyrannized by public opinion. Don’t get trapped in an echo chamber. Whether you in the end reject or embrace a view, make sure you decide where you stand by critically assessing the arguments for the competing positions. Think for yourself. Good luck to you in college! Paul Bloom Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor of Psychology Yale University Nicholas Christakis Sol Goldman Family Professor of Social and Natural Science Yale University Carlos Eire T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies Yale University Maria E. Garlock Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Co-Director of the Program in Architecture and Engineering Princeton University Robert P. George McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions Princeton University Mary Ann Glendon Learned Hand Professor of Law Harvard University Joshua Katz Cotsen Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Classics Princeton University Thomas P. Kelly Professor of Philosophy Princeton University Jon Levenson Albert A. List Professor of Jewish Studies Harvard University John B. Londregan Professor of Politics and International Affairs Princeton University Michael A. Reynolds Associate Professor of Near Eastern Studies Princeton University Jacqueline C. Rivers Lecturer in Sociology and African and African-American Studies Harvard University Noël Valis Professor of Spanish Yale University Tyler VanderWeele Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and Director of the Program on Integrative Knowledge and Human Flourishing Harvard University Adrian Vermeule Ralph S. Tyler, Jr. Professor of Constitutional Law Harvard University