Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal on November 13, 2024. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission.
Professor John Ellis has been a critic of our higher education system for many years. His book the Breakdown of Higher Education—which I reviewed here—masterfully analyzed the perverse trends that were—and still are—causing our colleges and universities to deliver much less educational value at much higher cost. His latest book, A Short History of Relations Between Peoples, is not primarily about higher education, but Martin Center readers will find it important because Ellis indicts our academic elites for their role in undoing centuries of progress and turning humanity back towards tribalism.
The main goal of this book is to explain, as the subtitle reads, “How the world began to move beyond tribalism.” For all of human history up to around 1500 A.D., people naturally had a tribal outlook—they feared those from outside of their own tribe, and for good reasons. Few human beings had any moral qualms about pillaging and enslaving people in tribes that couldn’t defend themselves. Almost nobody thought of humanity as one family that could cooperate peacefully for mutual advantage.
So, how did we—mostly—get past our ingrained tribalism and begin to think of all humans as family members? Ellis argues that only within the last 500 years have people gotten away from tribal hatreds and adopted a gens una sumus—humanity is one family—philosophy. They did so for several interrelated reasons.
First, the Age of Discovery brought many far-flung peoples into contact for the first time. The discoverers themselves were not interested in spreading a humanitarian philosophy but merely gaining wealth and power for their sovereign backers. But after the discoverers came missionaries, who sought to persuade natives to adopt Christianity, something that called for peace and understanding, not violence and exploitation. Today, those missionaries are often criticized by “progressives” for imposing their values on the natives. Instead, Ellis argues, they were the first to live by and begin spreading the gens una sumus philosophy.
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Another key to the evolution of tolerance and cooperation was the invention of the printing press. Ellis notes that the printing press made possible a huge expansion in literacy, which in turn made it possible for ordinary people to express and debate ideas about morality. For the first time in history, a public conscience began to form—especially in Britain—with the people sharing opinions about right and wrong.
That conscience grew to oppose the mistreatment of other peoples, no matter their race or religion. For the first time in history, slavery was widely condemned as immoral. So strong was the public’s opposition to slavery that, by the early 19th century, Britain’s government began to deploy its most formidable resource, its Navy, against it. Ellis writes, “This was the greatest achievement of the British Enlightenment. The British didn’t at long last stumble into correct values, as their modern detractors want us to believe: they created them.”
The British people insisted that their empire needed to treat the people under their dominion with care and to improve their lives. That often was the case. Before long, many Britons were questioning whether they should even have an empire.
Ellis also credits international commerce as helping to spread the gens una sumus philosophy. As trade grew, people began to take an interest in the cultures of those with whom they traded. Moreover, the economic value of trade did at least as much to improve the lives of the foreign peoples as it did the lives of the Europeans. Among other things, electricity and modern medicine vastly improved the lives of people in Africa, Asia, and South America.
All of that being so, shouldn’t we look forward to steadily increasing harmony and prosperity across the globe? Ellis is skeptical, because today’s intelligentsia routinely attacks the foundations of harmony and prosperity. They’re paving the way for a resurgence of tribalism.
Freedom of speech and open debate were instrumental in building the liberal, tolerant, concerned society we now enjoy, but freedom of speech is endangered. “Progressive” academics argue that speech must be controlled for the good of society, since controversies can “harm” sensitive people. We routinely come across instances where speakers are “disinvited” because of their views, where faculty members are punished or even terminated, and where research that leftists dislike is censored.
Ellis cites the revealing example of Professor Bruce Gilley, who wrote an article exploring the idea that native peoples received some benefits from colonialism. Instead of making rational counter-arguments, Gilley’s academic enemies demanded that his article be retracted. Imagine where we would be if the elites of 1500 A.D. could have prevented discussion of ideas they disliked, such as that slavery and exploitation were objectionable. Today’s academics—in league with many politicians—want to close off human minds to anything that challenges their ideology.
Our academic elites also reject the all-men-are-equal philosophy. In their view, some are deserving of preferential treatment because of their victim status. If a student or faculty member wants to get in serious trouble, the way to do so is to criticize the “diversity” mania. Argue against the idea that America is characterized by racism and that we must have governmental policies geared to give us “equity,” and you will face an angry mob calling for your cancelation. In olden times, most believed that some people were just “fit” to be slaves and nothing more; today, the elite belief is that, because of society’s indelible racism, groups of people must be treated as wards of the state, not as individuals with agency.
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Ellis also laments how American students are being miseducated about our culture and history, so as to make them believe “progressive” narratives that are hostile to freedom, limited government, and capitalism. Courses on Western Civilization that once were pillars of a college education are being dumped in favor of “diversity” courses that emphasize group grievances. Ellis argues that Western Civilization courses were easy targets because they were misnamed: “The proper title for these courses should instead be, ‘The Origins and Development of Modern Life.’ Had they been properly named, the radical attack on them would not so easily have succeeded.” Getting rid of Western Civilization courses helped the academic elitists keep students away from books they didn’t want them to read and arguments they didn’t want them to hear.
Equally deplorable in the author’s mind is the “remedy” that the academic Left preaches—its DEI agenda. People in the supposedly oppressed minority groups are told to look to government for favors. Ellis counters, “The most sensible and productive plan for those belonging to population groups that were not among the innovators is to catch up as quickly as they can—to grab the innovations that constitute modernity, master them, and go on armed for better things.” Instead, the academic elites tell minority students “to sit on their hands, resenting modernity and all the effort that went into producing it as ‘Whiteness.’”
What a terrible, atavistic plan—to keep large numbers of people angry and ignorant so they will back the “progressive” quest for omnipotent government.
In the space of just over 100 pages, Ellis has explained how humanity escaped from our dark, violent, tribal past to the vastly improved present, but also how we are in danger of sliding back thanks to academic elitists.
Image designed by Jared Gould, inspired by the cover of John Ellis’s The Breakdown of Higher Education, using the Thinker statue by Rawpixel.com (Adobe Stock, Asset ID: 803253557).
