How can we educate responsible leaders in a modern democratic society?
Walter Lippmann in 1920 (credit: Media Nation)
You’ve probably never heard of Walter Lippmann, but historians Clinton Rossiter and James Lare described him as “perhaps the most important political thinker of the twentieth century.”
A prolific public intellectual, journalist, and political philosopher, Lippman published dozens of books and wrote thousands of articles over his half-century career. His syndicated column, “Today and Tomorrow,” appeared in hundreds of newspapers and was read by millions of Americans. Though Lippmann began his career as a socialist and ended it as a conservative, his work maintained a remarkably consistent focus: the challenge of responsible leadership in modern democracy.
Today, on the 50th anniversary of his death, Lippmann’s insights still resonate, particularly for an institution like Claremont McKenna College, whose mission is to prepare students for “responsible leadership in business, government, and the professions.” But Lippmann’s vision of responsible leadership challenges CMC’s current approach to fulfilling its mission.
Five years before CMC’s founding, Lippmann warned that deference to public opinion “destroys the sense of responsibility in public men and deprives public opinion of responsible leadership.” This perspective might seem counterintuitive—aren’t leaders supposed to be accountable to the public? For Lippmann, the answer lies deeper: leaders must first be accountable to the moral law, a higher standard of truth and justice. But in modern democratic society, leaders are always tempted to defer to public opinion rather than the moral law.
Though the moral law exists independently of the public, it must be supported by public opinion. Modern society, however, has been captivated by relativism and nihilism, which deny the existence of the moral law. Lippmann observed how the industrial revolution unsettled the customs and traditions that once anchored American society. “We have changed our environment more quickly than we know how to change ourselves,” Lippman wrote. This upheaval eroded support for the moral law and left individuals alienated in the world they created.
So how can CMC cultivate responsible leadership in such a world? Some suggest that a modern democratic society demands a modern democratic education focused on teaching students to address the political problems of the day. But Lippman railed against modern democratic education for focusing on technical competence rather than timeless truths. “Democracy,” Lippmann wrote, “has never developed an education for the public. It has merely given it a smattering of the kind of knowledge which the responsible man requires.” Instead of fostering good citizens or responsible leaders, democratic education risks producing “a mass of amateur executives.”
But if not technical competence or the political problems of the day, what ought the university to teach? According to Lippmann, universities must preserve “the tradition of the good life” rooted in “the religious and classical culture of the Western world.” By doing so, they can offer students the tools to engage with perennial moral questions rather than just fleeting political controversies. Modern universities, including CMC, often eschew this mission, instead favoring what Lippmann called “the elective, eclectic, the specialized, the accidental and incidental improvisations and spontaneous curiosities of teachers and students.”
But why does traditional education matter? Why shouldn’t students just follow their “spontaneous curiosities?” Because humans are rational, they are capable of knowing the moral law, but because humans are flawed, they are capable of getting it wrong. Without guidance from traditional wisdom, knowledge about the good life must be rediscovered, which stalls moral progress. “A society can be progressive only if it conserves its traditions,” Lippmann wrote. The university plays an indispensable role in this process, transmitting knowledge accumulated over the course of millennia.
If CMC aspires to cultivate responsible leadership, it must grapple with Lippmann’s critique. For the university to successfully educate responsible leaders, it must separate itself from contemporary political pressures. Responsible leadership, according to Lippmann, is not about addressing the political and economic problems of the day but confronting the deeper, perennial issues of human existence. This requires an education that prioritizes moral clarity over technical expertise, tradition over novelty, and wisdom over popularity. For this reason, the university should refrain from wading into partisan political controversies.
If CMC truly hopes to cultivate responsible leadership, it must resist the Siren songs of everyday political concerns and insulate itself from democratic pressures. It must counter the disaffection that dominates our society and embrace traditional education. Or, as Lippmann himself might have put it: in an age defined by relativism and nihilism, the most radical act a university can undertake is to conserve the wisdom of the past.
This piece is part of the Salvatori Center's Profiles in American Political Thought. You can find a complete list of those pieces here.
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