A few organizations through which I’m doing those things these days are:

Tocqueville Center;
Minnesota Association of Scholars

I’m obsessed with the “marketplace of ideas,” the notion that, when the full range of ideas is up for vigorous debate, the ideas that emerge will be those that are best for society. The problem I see is that the full range of ideas isn’t put forward as much these days in important parts of the Academy as it used to be. There’s more filtering according to the political persuasion of the majority of faculty, to the exclusion, even derision, of less popular but no less important ideas. In some institutions, the majority of faculty prefer conservative ideas; in many, the majority prefer liberal or radical ones. Often the result is not so much education but indoctrination. The substitution of indoctrination for education is the single most important problem in American higher education. It is, in my opinion, undermining the very foundations of scholarship and teaching.

The main goal of the Minnesota Association of Scholars under my presidency is to broaden the range of ideas presented to students (and faculty) by presenting the kinds of moderate and conservative ideas that often get short shrift, especially in our liberal arts colleges. Most of the Association’s effort these days is through the Tocqueville Center at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities. I’m pleased to report that our efforts are enjoying considerable success.

You can learn more about these organizations by visiting www.MnScholars.org and www.MnScholars.org/Tocqueville.

Circumnavigators Club

Rattling along on the Trans-Manchurian Railway near Harbin, China, I saw among all the Asian and Russian passengers a young man who looked obviously American. When I inquired, he explained that his research proposal on global economics had won a contest sponsored by an outfit called The Circumnavigators Club, an educational and philanthropic association of travelers all of whom have, at least once, “crossed every meridian of longitude.” We now have a Minnesota chapter of the Circumnavigators Club. We're a small but lively band who get getting together periodically to swap stories and advice, listen to outside speakers, and discuss not so much the tourist sites of the world as the seriously important side of travel, e.g., What have we learned from our travels that helps us understand why various people do what they do? How can that understanding contribute to harmony among nations?

For more, please visit www.CircumnavigatorsClub.org.

Transformative Consumer Research

It’s hard for someone with my odd collection of interests and values to find a professional organization to call home, but the Association for Consumer Research is, at least for now, the one where I’m spending most of my energy. Within that association is David Mick’s brainchild, the initiative on Trans-formative Consumer Research (TCR). The purpose of David’s effort is to intensify researchers’ focus on topics that will help make life better for people around the world, especially people who enjoy fewer advantages than many other people do. Right now David and I are building a website brimful of resources that will help researchers and teachers bring TCR into their work. My longer-term goal is to develop a TCR section on people and their money.

For more, please visit here.

Service

Erik Erikson was right. The older I get, the more interested I become in passing ideas and experience along to the next generation. I’m especially interested in getting valuable but unpopular ideas in front of students and faculty, in promoting a deeper under-standing of cultures with which most of us are not very familiar, and in finding ways to make life a little easier especially for people in developing nations around the world.