So David Brooks notices that the “moral fervor” of our “campus crusaders” is unchastened by “settled philosophy,” meaning a disciplined tradition of thought. It’s true that it’s become all engagement, all the time. The cure for idealism that morphs into tyranny (as all idealism can easily do) is, from the time of Plato onward, the study of philosophy.

That means, as Socrates kind of said, “come on, let’s talk about it first.” And it’s the job of “the philosopher,” or even just “the teacher of philosophy,” to gently introduce into the conversation (with nary a trigger warning) opinions far outside the zealot’s comfort zone. The point of the discipline of philosophy is to remind us that it’s not so clear what justice is, and that in a free society almost all of the competing opinions about justice have some truth to them. Not only that, both philosophy and theology remind us that political justice and technological transformation aren’t everything — or even the most important things.

So one result of our slide from disciplined to competency-based higher education is a combination of techno-enthusiasm and political enthusiasm at odds with both free thought and freedom of thought.