Conflicts arise at many American universities today because they are pursuing two potentially incompatible goals: truth and social justice.
According to some versions of social justice, whenever we observe a disparity of outcomes between races, genders, or other groups, we should infer that injustice has been done. Haidt challenges this view of social justice and shows how it sometimes leads to violations of truth, and even justice.
Haidt concludes that universities should be free to pursue whatever goals – truth or social justice – they want, but that they should make it clear which of these two goals is their “telos” – their highest purpose. – [ From the YouTube summary of the video: Two incompatible sacred values in American Universiites, Jon Haidt, Hayek Lecture Series ]
The incompatible teloses of truth and social justice create two distinctly different logical threads which lead as inescapably as two separate rows of standing dominos to two equally incompatible conceptions of the values of liberty, equality, justice and fairnes. They lead to two incompatible world views; two incompatible visions of what human nature is, can be, and should be. Those two conceptions and visions have been the driving forces of political struggles and culture wars in Western civilization since The Enlightenment if not longer. They are identified in the following table:
| The Telos of Truth leads logically to… | The Telos of Social Justice leads logically to… |
| Process-based liberty, equality, justice, and fairness | Outcome-based liberty, equality, justice, and fairness |
| Negative liberty, equality, justice, and fairness | Positive liberty, equality, justice, and fairness |
| One set of rules that applies, and is applied, the same for everyone | Different rules for different people depending on their membership in perceived victim/privilege identity groups |
| Rule of Law | Rule by Man (i.e., social engineering or levelling) |
| Constrained Vision | Unconstrained Vision, Cosmic Justice |
| British/Scottish/American Enlightenment thinking, traditions, values, and principles | European/Continental Enlightenment thinking, traditions, values, and principles |
| Conservatism | Progressivism (aka American Liberalism) |
The Independent Whig 
Discussion
Trackbacks/Pingbacks
Pingback: Liberal Hegemonic Control of Academia, Entertainment, and Media Sacrifices Truth on the Alter of Social Justice | The Independent Whig - October 26, 2016