> The student explodes, “Then why the fuck did you accept the position?! Who the fuck hired you?! You should step down! If that is what you think about being a master you should step down! It is not about creating an intellectual space! It is not! Do you understand that? It’s about creating a home here. You are not doing that!”

Bloom places a heavy emphasis on extolling to college students the virtues of western intellectual tradition, and reactions like this one show why. Willingness to entertain ideas that could cause social disharmony is actually pretty unusual among world cultures. It's unusual in the western world, but even more so nearly everywhere else. It's not the natural order of things. It's a discovery, an achievement, but one that can be lost to time.