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Catholic colleges and universities can be at the forefront of reforming higher education, said George Weigel, the biographer of Pope St. John Paul II, in a May 28 op-ed for First Things.
Weigel argued that many modern universities, such as Harvard, are corrupted by a “radical skepticism” that he described as “a principled refusal to say that there are certain things we can know to be true, period, not just true-for-me.”
However, Weigel argued, certain things can be known to be true: people know the Pieta and Bach’s St. Matthew Passion are beautiful, just as people know that literature can convey truths about the human condition.
Similarly, he wrote, people know that certain acts, such as abusing children, are always evil.
“The human capacity to grasp the truth of things is not confined to a priori judgments, like two plus two always equals four in the base-ten system,” he argued. “Our intellectual reach is greater than that, and so is our intellectual grasp.”
Catholic education, he wrote, can lead the reform of education by embracing objective truths rather than the “radical skepticism” so prevalent among modern higher education.
Elaborating on the problem of “radical skepticism” and its effects, Weigel recalled that when Drew Gilpin Faust was inaugurated as Harvard’s president in 2007, she gave a speech about the Harvard shield’s inscription, Veritas (truth). She said that the motto was “intended to invoke the absolutes of divine revelation, the unassailable verities” that shaped founder John Harvard’s mind.
Faust offered a vastly different interpretation of truth, arguing that it is not a possession, and thus, the intellectual must commit himself “to the uncomfortable position of doubt.”
Weigel wrote, “This posture of radical skepticism… strikes most people as ludicrous, if not downright absurd.”
The radical skepticism espoused by Faust leads to both nihilism and relativism, Weigel wrote, arguing that such consequences are exemplified in another Harvard president’s treatment of antisemitism on campus.
“Claudine Gay (Drew Faust’s second successor as president of Harvard) waffled on the question of whether anti-Semitic, genocidal ravings in Harvard Yard were protected by ‘academic freedom,’” he wrote, “because it all ‘depends on the context.’”
How does the Catholic Church, which founded the first universities in the 13th century, offer a response to this relativism?
“Catholic institutions of higher learning can lead the reform of college and university life,” Weigel writes: “if they refuse to indulge the fashionable skepticism that has led to the corruption of so many campuses, with devastating results now displayed on the front page of newspapers and the home page of websites.”
For more on the topic of truth, Weigel pointed readers to his April 2025 book published by Ignatius Press, Pomp, Circumstance, and Unsolicited Advice: Commencement Addresses and University Lectures.
