The Athens of America

One of Boston’s many nicknames is “the Athens of America.” The nickname is derived from two contradictory sources. The first is Boston’s harboring of America’s great orators during the eighteenth-century and the role those orators and the city played in starting a democratic revolution in 1775 and in extending that revolution to African Americans and women during the antebellum period. The second source is a product of the many universities in Boston. These universities make Boston the best educated large city in America if not the world in much the same way that Athenians were a well-educated citizenry (the slaves and women didn’t count) thanks to the many academies and traveling teachers in that great city.

There is a contradiction here. Boston’s great orators were trained in rhetoric—that expertise is what made them great. But Boston’s universities, following Harvard’s lead, are opposed to rhetoric. As rhetoric fell out of favor in the Truth-mad eighteenth century, Harvard took the lead in expelling the one discipline most firmly opposed to truth. Rhetoric, and its practice of argument, is a search for common ground, compromise, and what is best—not truth. Solutions are reached through the employment of words, debate, give and take, and a mutual ability to recognize two sides. But during the eighteenth century, Enlightenment scientists were certain of truth—a good-given, yet scientifically provable ideal. Though some scientists hold fast to the model, even Einstein’s theory of relativity suggests that truth can occupy many different positions. And while rhetoric is gradually regaining prominence in universities across America, it is not in Boston where rhetoric can only be found at Boston College (an institution inspired by the pre-Enlightenment Jesuits) and Northeastern University (created by the practically inclined YMCA).

Here is the great irony: Though it was rhetoric that gave the Americans the ability to expel the British, inspired Americans to democracy, and enabled the incorporation of African Americans and women into the polity, the abandonment of rhetoric threatens most of those goals. Without the ability to argue well and to recognize the validity of two or more sides in an argument, we are left with self-righteousness, polarization, and deadlock. In other words, Harvard’s abandonment of rhetoric has led us to a politics of hatred and incomprehension in the American republic that dooms democracy to a slow death. Will Harvard recant? This is doubtful because Harvard has grown accustomed to being right (this is more a measure of its endowment than its accuracy). Community groups in Boston and Cambridge have come to dislike Harvard because the institution’s lack of interest in negotiations and thus in rhetoric. What we must hope is that other universities stop following Harvard’s lead.