Yet we are in thrall to an outdated philosophy that disempowers us. There are huge challenges we face as a society. The growing racial divide. All these are grave dangers. But I would argue that the deepest crisis is that we are in a time of profound technological and social change, and mostly people see these as beyond human control.
Higher education is a microcosm of the dangers and the powerlessness, alike.
New technologies are like a genie out of the bottle for higher education. There is a profound fatalism in Levine, but a sense of powerlessness, I have found, affects faculty. Faculty members, by and large, experience an insidious socialization, especially in graduate school. We learn a stance of ironic detachment, and embody such detachment in a variety of ways. The image of the detached and objective scholar and teacher is woven into the fabric of our work.