Niall Ferguson: The Treason of the Intellectuals
Students at a public speaking school in the lecture hall of Berlin’s Humboldt University, c. 1931. (Photo by bpk/Salomon/ullstein bild via Getty Images)
Anyone who has a naive belief in the power of higher education to instill morality has not studied the history of German universities in the Third Reich.
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In 1927 the French philosopher Julien Benda published La trahison des clercs—“The Treason of the Intellectuals”—which condemned the descent of European intellectuals into extreme nationalism and racism. By that point, although Benito Mussolini had been in power in Italy for five years, Adolf Hitler was still six years away from power in Germany and 13 y…
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