To my mind, the most cringe-inducing moment in the drama of Claudine Gay and her resignation as president of Harvard University was not when she whiffed at unambiguously condemning genocidal threats against Jews as violations of Harvard’s norms for student behavior. That was horrible, to be sure. Even more telling, though, was Gay’s subsequent apology, in which she expressed regret for having “failed to convey what is my truth.”
Hard as it may be for normal people to grasp, the notion that there is only “my truth” and “your truth,” but nothing properly describable as the truth, is virtually axiomatic in the humanities departments of American “elite” universities, and has been for some time. Now, following the Orwellian script in Animal Farm, the woke plague has created a situation in which some of those personal “truths” are deemed more equal than others’ “truths” — the superior truths being the “truths” of political correctness.
As dean of the Harvard faculty, Claudine Gay was a vigorous proponent of the new axiom that some truths are truer than others. But in her apology, she reverted to the basic, postmodernist absurdity that “truth” is a matter of personal conviction rather than conviction anchored in reality. Her downfall thus illustrates another axiom, one that antedates post-modernism by almost two centuries: the Revolution devours its children (Jacques Mallet du Pan, writing from Paris 1793 as the tumbrils rolled).
When post-modernism first reared its head decades ago, some Christian thinkers suggested that its mantra of your-truth/my-truth might provide an opening to serious intellectual exchange with non-believers, which was impossible with those academic nihilists and relativists who denied that there was any truth at all. This always struck me as a forlorn hope. For what happens when there is only “your truth” and “my truth” and our “truths” collide? Absent any agreed horizon of judgment (call it “the truth”) against which we can settle our difference, either you will impose your power on me or I will impose my power on you.
Which means the death of serious conversation, of scholarship and, ultimately, of democracy.
7,494 miles away, I doubt the thought occurred to my friend Jimmy Lai; but the fact that the Claudine Gay affair coincided with the beginning of Jimmy’s trial on charges of having violated Chinese “national security” by defending the basic human rights of his fellow Hong Kongers nicely illustrated Oscar Wilde’s point about life imitating art — including the arts of irony.
For there was President Gay, trying to save herself by an appeal to “my truth,” while Jimmy was risking life imprisonment at a Stalinesque show trial because he had courageously borne witness to the truth: the truth that today’s Hong Kong regime is a thugocracy terrified by free speech and a free press; the truth that the Beijing regime that controls Hong Kong is comprehensively violating the commitments to honor basic human rights it had made when Hong Kong reverted to Chinese sovereignty in 1997; and, perhaps above all, the truth that Catholic faith demands solidarity with those defending their God-given rights — rights that express built-in truths about the inalienable dignity and infinite value of every human life.
Jimmy Lai has become a Christian artist during his three years in solitary confinement; few, if any, gifts that I have received in my life have touched me as deeply as the two sketches he has sent me from Stanley Prison. Both embody his commitment to truth — not just “his” truth, but truth, period — and his understanding that truth-telling is risky business in this world. The price of truth-telling is expressed in a crucifixion scene, rendered in colored pencil on the kind of lined paper we once used in elementary school. The commitment to live in the truth is captured in a beautiful Madonna with the simple inscription “Yes!” (cf. Luke 1:38).
Once asked what sentence he would wish saved if the rest of the Bible were somehow destroyed, John Paul II responded without hesitation, “You will know the truth and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32). Jimmy Lai’s life and art luminously express that conviction about the liberating power of truth. We must hope and pray that Claudine Gay and the rest of the post-modern academic establishment — which has turned “elite” American higher education into a playpen for rabid antisemites, pampered snowflakes, and madcap ideologues — eventually come to understand what Jimmy understands.
Because that would set them free, spiritually as well as intellectually. Thus liberated, they could be true educators rather than enforcers of woke ideological conformity.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
A minor point in light of the content of the article, but I think Hong Kong reverted to Chinese authority in 1997, not 1979. Forgive the nitpicking.
The only defence against tyranny is religious faith, belief that there is a God higher than human folly and wickedness. Only the truth can set us free. There is no truth without God. There is no freedom without truth.
In his last two paragraphs, Weigel faults post-modern academia, partly, for its “pampered snowflakes.” A reminder of Brown University which possible set the standard for recovery on campus from real ideas felt to be “damaging.” The safe space was/is (?) a room offering “cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh [not Plato], calming music, pillows, blankets, and a video of frolicking puppies” (New York Times (2016).
What is the annual undergrad tuition at Brown U?
Just imagine if everyone spoke the unblemished truth every time they opened their mouth. How refreshing would that be?
““truth” is a matter of personal conviction rather than conviction anchored in reality”
And surely truth does not divide. Oh certainly there is room for differences of opinion.
Nevertheless, truth and opinion should co-exist without social punishment and censorship. People should take a hard look at Harvard, and what it stands for. Lacking at Harvard is excellence. One huge behemoth of divisiveness and excommunication, where humans miss the mark in a big way. The power of offended sentiments. At Harvard, one cannot even argue points constructively. Just rage. Little room for love. True love, though Harvard might not admit to such a reality.
Claudine Gay should have used the MLK defense: “Hey, if Martin Luther King–whom you, Harvard, venerate every year–can plagiarize his doctoral dissertation, why can’t I?”
Is “your truth/my truth” really the mantra of postmodernism? Often Derrida is described as a postmodernist. But he would have deplored this mantra. (I realise he did not describe himself as a postmodernist.)
I hate it when people say “my truth” as though there is something personal or subjective about it. When people talk about having a relationship with a friend in outer space, what they are essentially saying is “my truth”.
Is it the case that our Catholic Church “establishment-elites,” such as the Pontiff Francis, his “vice-pontiff” the Secretary of State Eminence Parolin, and the vast majority (i.e. ~90%, judging from the sense of the Newman Society) of our “legacy-Catholic-university-and-college-leadership” are in any meaningful sense distinguished by their witness to the truth?
No, it is discouraging to admit.
One could perhaps understandably have insisted that the answer was yes, when we had a Pontiff such as John Paul II, and Benedict XVI, and their respective heads of the Congregation for the Faith, Cardinal Ratzinger and Cardinal Mueller.
But it seems that the divine purpose of the papal conclave of 2013 is to reveal the naked truth of “the-non-confessing-Catholic-establishment,” that they do not believe that Christianity is founded by God and his Son Incarnate, crucified and risen.
As a result, they cannot defend Jimmy Lai, because they have no compelling faith that animates them to defend witnesses to truth like Jimmy Lai.
They are just “Catholic-formats-of-Claudine-Gray.”
Or, to put it a different way, we can listen to the credo of one of the “leading lights” and “witnesses” of the “Catholic-leadership-class,” His Eminence Cardinal Kasper: “He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried…on the third day he OBTRUDED IN THE SPIRIT.”
If we believe in the testimony of Jesus and his apostles and evangelists, we may, over the course of years, go through a process of “disenchantment” regarding many of the “successors of the apostles,” and understand why they do not raise their voice in defense of the truth witnessed by faithful men, like Jimmy Lai.
You cannot defend what you do not claim.
Not often I completely agree with Weigel these days. In years past, it seemed to be always. This pontificate has driven all of us somewhat crazy. The labeled “rad-trads” are much maligned, even by Catholics who think they side with preserving orthodoxy. Nonetheless, I listen to trads and agree with their concerns almost always. But my single biggest problem is their lack of a political sense. The Church is hemorrhaging, and the battle is over truth, which is a word that should replace the overemphasized word tradition in debate. Tradition is too easily dismissed in the popular imagination as those just attached to customs they regard as meaningless or obsolete, as though there could be such a thing in religion. But when we argue that the crisis is all about truth, then people are willing to listen, and the first arguments must always remind everyone that all truth originates with an unchangeable God.
Not often do I completely agree with Weigel these days. In years past, it seemed to be always. This pontificate has driven all of us somewhat crazy. The labeled “rad-trads” are much maligned, even by Catholics who think they side with preserving orthodoxy. Nonetheless, I listen to trads and agree with their concerns almost always. But my single biggest problem is their lack of a political sense. The Church is hemorrhaging, and the battle is over truth, which is a word that should replace the overemphasized word tradition in debate. Tradition is too easily dismissed in the popular imagination as those just attached to customs they regard as meaningless or obsolete, as though there could be such a thing in religion. But when we argue that the crisis is all about truth, then people are willing to listen, and the first arguments must always remind everyone that all truth originates with an unchangeable God.
At the root of the lust for power, wealth, pleasure, and/or honor is “My truth.” The open sesame to all of these.
Excellent!
Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.