But this places the strongest demands and responsibilities on philosophy itself. Ours is an infantilizing culture, sadly one of our healthiest exports to the rest of the world. And all this with complacency and good conscience. The USA is a bold experiment - a country forged out of revolution whose greatness depends on the way it sustains that legacy. This means consolidating and developing institutions that serve its founding values of freedom, justice and equality of opportunity.
All institutions are subject to corruption.
This applies to states, to the organs of state, to the universities and colleges that make up what we call higher education, and to philosophy itself. I do not simply mean that the principles on which an institution was founded are lost sight of. It would be hopelessly prescriptive to call that corruption. After all, an institution might have been founded on narrow self-interest, and only subsequently discovered the values that made it great. Or it might constructively adapt its principles.