The Loss of Truth

“There are many factors at work in the present assault on academic freedom, but undoubtedly one, as we have seen, is the loss of truth as a value. There is no such thing as truth, goes the postmodern mantra: there are only interpretations. There is no such thing as history; there are only narratives. The university, like every other social institution, is recast. It is no longer seen as a community of scholars in pursuit of truth; instead it is viewed as a system of power. In the past – so the theory goes – the strong exercised hegemony over the weak by teaching them to see the world in ways that perpetuate the existing hierarchy and its injustices. That hegemony must be exposed for what it is. In the new dispensation, there are only victims and oppressors, and if you are not on the side of the victims, you must be an oppressor. That is the moral blackmail currently used to curtail freedom of speech.”

Morality, Chapter 12, p. 184