This was mostly interesting. I disagree with a few minor points but none that matter, except its predicated (or maybe not*) on the idea that this university will be an institution of principled right wing / conservative thought.
What is more likely to happen is that its going to turn into "The Quilette" or Jordan Peterson as a university. By this I mean (to use an analogy from Canadian politics) running for the leader of the opposition - spending all the time complaining about the other side instead of putting forward ideas of it's own. This is great for getting a following, but it's not great for developing a principled viewpoint, or, as the gladwell article says, for exposing people to actual opposing views. It's more like exposing people to criticisms of their own views, which could be productive, but less so than actual different principles.
All that said, I think the university is an experiment worth trying, because as gladwell points out, the current situation sucks. Hopefully I'm wrong and it will really introduce people to a new set of ideas and lead to some good debates, instead of just becoming an echo chamber.
*Its possible that people like gladwell support this because it's likely to basically turn out to be a strawman that makes an easy adversary for liberals to feel superior in their views over. I'm not saying that's true, or at least they he's conscious of it, but there is an air of "let people go see how bad conservatism is" which can become self fulfilling if it's just a bunch of people whining about liberals instead of proposing ideas of their own
Why should we care about anything MG thinks? He’s intellectually dishonest and a usurper of other’s ideas. And a joke of a leftist. A popularizer of twisted logic presented as cutting edge
What is more likely to happen is that its going to turn into "The Quilette" or Jordan Peterson as a university. By this I mean (to use an analogy from Canadian politics) running for the leader of the opposition - spending all the time complaining about the other side instead of putting forward ideas of it's own. This is great for getting a following, but it's not great for developing a principled viewpoint, or, as the gladwell article says, for exposing people to actual opposing views. It's more like exposing people to criticisms of their own views, which could be productive, but less so than actual different principles.
All that said, I think the university is an experiment worth trying, because as gladwell points out, the current situation sucks. Hopefully I'm wrong and it will really introduce people to a new set of ideas and lead to some good debates, instead of just becoming an echo chamber.
*Its possible that people like gladwell support this because it's likely to basically turn out to be a strawman that makes an easy adversary for liberals to feel superior in their views over. I'm not saying that's true, or at least they he's conscious of it, but there is an air of "let people go see how bad conservatism is" which can become self fulfilling if it's just a bunch of people whining about liberals instead of proposing ideas of their own