Commentary Liberal arts education, as I experienced it at Antioch College in the late 1950s and early 1960s, was aimed at opening students’ minds to the intellectual life of Western culture. Students were asked to consider such questions as “What counts as a good life?”, “How do people’s ideas and actions differ from place to place and time to time?”, “What is the basis of social life?”, “Do people have free will or is life determined?”, “Where does wealth come from?”, “Is science different from other belief systems?”, “What is beauty?”, “Who should govern?”, and many others engaged with literature, languages, and science. Liberal arts education relied on academic values derived from the Enlightenment. These are openness in the search for truth, merit-based selection of personnel, and academic freedom for diversity of thought. These values are based on, as Gad Saad puts it, “the defining ethos of the West, namely …
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