A College Reading List for the Post-Truth Era
Nietzel has another suggestion, although he admits it is increasingly rare as an academic expectation: serious reading. He offers seven recent books which champion reason over emotion, distinguish facts from fallacies, and enumerate the dangers of ignoring the truth. He notes that he is following in the footsteps of Henry Frankfurt’s . He says that these books could be assigned in individual classes or serve as the common reader often required for campus-wide discussions.
Here are Nietzel’s suggestions:
The Misinformation Age by Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall. The most technical work on the list, The Misinformation Age analyzes how falsehoods spread through social networks. Sometimes it’s through the work of well-placed propagandists, sometimes the amplification of minority viewpoints taking advantage of weaknesses in the marketplace of ideas. Regardless, misinformation is quickly transmitted and uncritically accepted through selective consumption of cable news and cause-driven social media. Count this one a particularly good choice for advanced seminars in communications.
Kurt Andersen’s Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire offers a broad - often repetitive - polemic against kooks, charlatans, New Agers, UFO chasers and political extremists. Anderson skewers goofballs and grifters on the political left and right, but he reserves his sharpest disdain for religious evangelicals and what he sees as their faith-based susceptibility to fantastical beliefs. Fantasyland is funny, edgy and relentlessly critical; it won’t win over fans of Donald Trump. Assign it, and then duck.
Truth Decay by Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael Rich is a 2018 study published by the Rand Corporation. It analyzes the diminishing role of accurate information in political discourse, driven by four trends: increasing disagreement about facts and data, a blurring of lines between opinion and fact, the ascending influence of personal opinions over objective facts, and declining reliance on formerly respected sources of information.
The Death of Expertise by Tom Nichols is a contemporary analysis of American anti-intellectualism, reworking a theme explored previously by Richard Hofstadter and Susan Jacoby. As Nichols writes, “To reject the advice of experts is to assert autonomy, a way for Americans to insulate their increasingly fragile egos from every being told they’re wrong about anything.” A great reference about science-deniers and expert-haters, Nichols’ book is provocative and accessible.
Lee McIntyre’s Post-Truth is a concise examination of how truth is subordinated in modern America by several villains that allow post-truth to thrive. Featuring historical and current examples, Post-Truth is a serious work, brief enough to serve as an all-campus reader. Also seviceable for this purpose are similar titles by Matthew D’Ancona (Post-Truth: The New War On Truth And How To Fight Back) and James Ball (Post-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered The World).
“Make no mistake, assigning any of these books requires fortitude. Each will stir controversy,” Nietzel writers. “Stopping the decay of truth is not easy work and not for the faint-of-heart. But it’s what good universities do.”
Michael T. Nietzel is president emeritus of Missouri State University. Before moving to MSU, he was a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Kentucky, where he also served as director of the Clinical Psychology Program, chair of the department of psychology, dean of the graduate school, and provost. Read the article: A” College Reading List for the Post-Truth Era,” Forbes (26 August 2019)
