Virtuous Nonsense : Progressive America’s Epistemic Crisis

Many American liberals believe that misinformation is just a right-wing problem. As a result, they ignore a similar crisis of misinformation occurring on the left—particularly within higher education—and reflexively dismiss any such claim as just another right-wing talking point. Yet, as Virtuous Nonsense makes clear, the epistemic problems in blue America are not only real but also worsening and can no longer be ignored. With contributions from a wide range of liberal-minded scholars and thinkers, including Musa al-Gharbi, Jonathan Haidt, Carol Tavris, and Matthew Yglesias, among many others, the volume demonstrates how large segments of the academy—namely, in the social sciences, the humanities, and education—have become captive to progressive ideology. Where universities once sought to produce and disseminate reliable knowledge, far too many academics today prioritize activism and political projects. This results in poorly supported academic theories and distorted claims that eventually proliferate beyond the university—through the graduation of students who’ve received a flawed education, through a mainstream media that all too often credulously parrots even the most biased claims as “the truth,” and ultimately through public institutions increasingly shaped by politicized expertise. On subjects ranging from race and gender to single parenthood and free markets, Virtuous Nonsense exposes the most damaging of these academic distortions, which not only undermine public trust and sound policymaking but also artificially narrow the boundaries of acceptable debate. In so doing, it presents a challenge to the left: face the crisis, or remain complicit in the degradation of our intellectual and civic life. Until more liberals acknowledge the problem of malfunctioning disciplines and uncritical media environments, America cannot hope to repair its engines of knowledge—or recover from an epistemic crisis that sickens our culture, society, and politics.