A strategy colleges should promote to combat the misinformation of the post-truth era: serious reading
Getty
We live in a time beset with belittlement of science, hostility toward expertise, and attacks on traditional democratic institutions. It’s a post-truth period where conspiracy theories and crackpot ideas flourish. If the facts conflict with someone’s sense of identity or political ideology, then the facts are disposable. They can be replaced with notions that feel better or reverberate on social media.
This latest outbreak of anti-intellectualism is particularly disturbing because the stakes of stupidity have increased. Climate-change deniers put the planet’s viability in peril, anti-vaccinators subject their children to dangerous diseases, and a new breed of isolationists threatens the international partnerships that have contained tyrants and terrorists. When false beliefs are widespread, they can lead to trouble. Ultimately, the truth slaps us in the face, striking blows that hurt even more when it’s too late to protect against them.
What’s the proper role for colleges in this age of widespread deception and gullibility? Do they bear a responsibility to combat fraudulent claims, to sort the real from the fake? Can colleges prepare students to base their beliefs on evidence rather than preference? Can they help them become skeptical of overt lies and subtle propaganda?
Colleges need to embrace this obligation. Otherwise, they neglect the fundamental duty to educate students about the world and how it works, teaching them to upgrade their beliefs on the basis of accumulated knowledge. But how best to achieve these goals? What can colleges do to encourage students to be unwilling to accept ignorance as an asset?
Some have faced the challenge head-on. At the University of Washington, professors Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West offer Calling Bullshit: Data Reasoning in a Digital World, a course that teaches students how to detect b.s. and combat it with accurate analysis. Its syllabus has been shared with dozens of colleges across the nation.
Pedestrian as it might sound and increasingly rare as an academic expectation, serious reading is another way to sort truth from falsehood. With that in mind, here are seven recent books that champion reason over emotion, distinguish facts from fallacies and enumerate the dangers of ignoring the truth (following in the footsteps of Henry Frankfurt’s On Bullshit). They could be assigned in individual classes or serve as the common reader often required for campus-wide discussions.
The Misinformation Age by Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall. The most technical work on the list, The Misinformation Age analyzes how falsehoods spread through social networks. Sometimes it’s through the work of well-placed propagandists, sometimes the amplification of minority viewpoints taking advantage of weaknesses in the marketplace of ideas. Regardless, misinformation is quickly transmitted and uncritically accepted through selective consumption of cable news and cause-driven social media. Count this one a particularly good choice for advanced seminars in communications.
Kurt Andersen’s Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire offers a broad – often repetitive – polemic against kooks, charlatans, New Agers, UFO chasers and political extremists. Anderson skewers goofballs and grifters on the political left and right, but he reserves his sharpest disdain for religious evangelicals and what he sees as their faith-based susceptibility to fantastical beliefs. Fantasyland is funny, edgy and relentlessly critical; it won’t win over fans of Donald Trump. Assign it, and then duck.
Truth Decay by Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael Rich is a 2018 study published by the Rand Corporation. It analyzes the diminishing role of accurate information in political discourse, driven by four trends: increasing disagreement about facts and data, a blurring of lines between opinion and fact, the ascending influence of personal opinions over objective facts, and declining reliance on formerly respected sources of information.
The Death of Expertise by Tom Nichols is a contemporary analysis of American anti-intellectualism, reworking a theme explored previously by Richard Hofstadter and Susan Jacoby. As Nichols writes, “To reject the advice of experts is to assert autonomy, a way for Americans to insulate their increasingly fragile egos from every being told they’re wrong about anything.” A great reference about science-deniers and expert-haters, Nichols’ book is provocative and accessible.
Lee McIntyre’s Post-Truth is a concise examination of how truth is subordinated in modern America by several villains that allow post-truth to thrive. Featuring historical and current examples, Post-Truth is a serious work, brief enough to serve as an all-campus reader. Also seviceable for this purpose are similar titles by Matthew D’Ancona (Post-Truth: The New War On Truth And How To Fight Back) and James Ball (Post-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered The World).
Make no mistake, assigning any of these books requires fortitude. Each will stir controversy, both on campus and from many on the extreme right who will cast them as another manifestation of the academy’s liberal bias. Stopping the decay of truth is not easy work and not for the faint-of-heart. But it’s what good universities do.
