Tania Tetlow asks, “If We’re All in It for Ourselves, Who Are We?” in a 55-minute podcast where she shares her vision of what a modern college campus should be.
Responsibility
“In American society, we’ve always had a balance that was critical between individual rights and a sense of community and responsibility. That balance is really out of whack right now. We’ve leaned so heavily into individual rights, which are crucial. But if they’re unmoored from the idea of community, of what we owe each other, they’re really quite dangerous. If we’re all in it for ourselves, who are we? And so what Catholic teachings really offer is a reminder that we do have to care about community, that we have not just rights, but responsibilities.”
Discernment
“I know from our faculty that every day in the classroom they try to not just teach knowledge, but the skills of discernment, of what it means to have reflective practices, where we’re going to really think about what we learned and stop and take time. This is something that as a law professor, is part of our ethos: I need for you to articulate the other side of the argument, not because we’re morally relativist, but because you can’t know the strength of your belief until you’re willing to think about the other side.”
“I think our faculty do a brilliant job of navigating how to take the temperature down when people disagree, how to say, “Okay, you are attacking the other student who you disagree with. You’re attacking them personally. You’re assuming they have bad intentions. You’re not listening to them.”
Value of Higher Education
“Universities are one of the places of great hope. We do bring people together. And that’s not just the obvious demographics — it’s also rural and urban, it’s different backgrounds economically, it’s just different upbringings. And we’ve leaned into that from a progressive point hard, but also that they find commonality, that they have so much more in common when they least expect it.”
“It’s hard because there’s great political benefit to tearing down trust in institutions. It’s easy to do. It resonates with people who are understandably cynical. And once you’ve done it, it’s done. And it’s very hard to rebuild. You know, all of higher ed has become majority female and that’s a much deeper topic to grapple with, and one I worry about as well.
“I think men are are opting out of the opportunities that they need in an increasingly knowledge-based economy, and we will all suffer as a result of that. And so I worry about that. So the return on investment is sort of laughable because when you look at the data, it is so clear the financial return on investment, right? Which just proves that you can make things up, and they stick. And I would say that part of what I find really offensive are politicians saying that it’s not worth it to go to college, none of whom say that to their own children.”
