It is a classic case of “pointing to the mote in your brother’s eye while ignoring the beam in your own.” Except other people are not ignoring the beam in our eye -- they can see it, and it enrages them.
Sandel is not afraid to name the problem. It’s hubris, he says, pure and simple. People who think they have earned their place of success and authority tend to believe they are paragons of virtue, even as their arrogant ways are causing division and destruction.
The institution that is most responsible for this is one that many of us deeply love and believe in: higher education. Sandel writes, “Higher education has become a sorting machine that promises mobility on the basis of merit but entrenches privilege and promotes attitudes toward success corrosive of the commonality democracy requires.”
The hard truth is that, even as colleges critique other forms of privilege, they do everything in their power to advertise the massive advantages graduates of their institution enjoy. College equals privilege. It’s part of the brand, a feature, not a bug.
I’m trying to find a kinder word for this than hypocrisy, but if we look at this situation from the perspective of those who do not have college degrees, how would we characterize it? So many people learn in college that privilege is nefarious, and yet they are part of a system whose goal is to confer advantage.
Eboo Patel
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