Higher Education’s Slide From ‘Veritas’ to ‘My Truth’
Picture the scene in the offices of the presidents of our great universities last week in the hours after their little day of infamy on Capitol Hill.
“Great job, Madam President. You absolutely knocked it out of the park. Really exposed those fascist Republicans for the patriarchal white supremacists they are. Thank God we don’t have any of them on the faculty.
The damage limitation didn’t work for Liz Magill, president of the University of Pennsylvania, who resigned on Saturday. It shouldn’t work either for Claudine Gay of Harvard or Sally Kornbluth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
As Ms. Gay again contradicted the words she had spoken at the hearing, she explained what had gone wrong. “I got caught up in what had become at that point, an extended, combative exchange about policies and procedures,” she said. “Substantively, I failed to convey what is my truth.”
Few phrases are as reliable as “my truth” for identifying seasoned purveyors of cant and doubletalk. Truth isn’t something that can be identified or modified by a possessive pronoun. If my truth is different from your truth and your truth is different from her truth, these aren’t truths. “My truth” is the device deployed to elevate the particular viewpoint of a member of a particular group or identity, by claiming the validation of the “truth” for a narrow ideological cause.
Gerard Baker WSJ 11 December 2023
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