What a remarkable study of American scholarship reveals about postmodernism, political certainty, and the Christian understanding of the human person
Introduction — The Surprising Persistence of Truth
A few weeks ago, Princeton professor Robert P. George brought to my attention a remarkable study that raises questions about American higher education—and, more fundamentally, about human nature.
Published by the American Academy of Sciences and Letters, Humanities in Crisis examines the language of 443,543 doctoral dissertations produced at American universities between 1960 and 2025. The researchers wanted to know how the intellectual priorities of the humanities and social sciences had changed.
Some discoveries were unsurprising. The language of identity, power, oppression, and social hierarchy has become increasingly prominent, especially in fields influenced by poststructuralist1Poststructuralism rejects authorial intention as interpretive authority, treating texts instead as cultural composites where meaning resides with the reader rather than the author. Central to deconstructionist strategy is the concept of “différance”—the idea that language operates through endless difference and deferral, making any single fixed interpretation impossible. Power analysis also features prominently, particularly in recognizing how institutions use discourse to impose particular perspectives while masking their exercise of influence. and postcolonial2Postcolonialism investigates how colonization has shaped societies, examines the power structures embedded in colonial knowledge systems, and amplifies the perspectives of those marginalized by cultural domination. theories. The study also found that Activism was increasingly viewed in a positive light—more so than any of the other terms the researchers examined.
But as I was reading through this study, another finding caught my attention.
Despite these intellectual changes, the language of truth has remained remarkably resilient. Scholars still employ the vocabulary of evidence, reason, and factual inquiry, while Truth itself retains consistently positive associations.
Now, there’s something intriguing about that.
Many contemporary frameworks emphasize how our understanding of reality is shaped by language, culture, identity, and relations of power. Yet scholars employing these frameworks—and activists who draw upon them—often express extraordinary confidence in their judgments about injustice and how society ought to be reconstructed.
Is there a philosophical tension here? Perhaps even a contradiction?
And what happens when our desire to change the world becomes more powerful than our willingness to discover what is true about it?
From the Pursuit of Truth to the Analysis of Power
For centuries, the humanities have wrestled with great questions of human existence. What is true? What is good? What is beautiful? What can history teach us about human nature, and what can literature reveal about the human condition?
These questions haven’t disappeared. But the study documents a striking shift in how many scholars approach them.
Beginning in the late 1980s, references to power, domination, oppression, hierarchy, and resistance increased dramatically, particularly in literature and language departments. During the 1990s, power-related vocabulary overtook both aesthetics and evaluation in those fields.
Meanwhile, the language of identity—race, gender, intersectionality, privilege, and related concepts—was growing even faster. The researchers estimate annual growth of approximately 5–8 percent in identity-related vocabulary in their statistical models. Especially pronounced changes appeared in literature, interdisciplinary programs, and certain social sciences.
These patterns reflect, at least in part, the growing influence of poststructuralist,3Poststructuralism rejects authorial intention as interpretive authority, treating texts instead as cultural composites where meaning resides with the reader rather than the author. Central to deconstructionist strategy is the concept of “différance”—the idea that language operates through endless difference and deferral, making any single fixed interpretation impossible. Power analysis also features prominently, particularly in recognizing how institutions use discourse to impose particular perspectives while masking their exercise of influence. postcolonial,4Postcolonialism investigates how colonization has shaped societies, examines the power structures embedded in colonial knowledge systems, and amplifies the perspectives of those marginalized by cultural domination. and critical-theory approaches. Human experience is increasingly examined through relationships between identity and power: who possesses it, who is excluded from it, and how institutions perpetuate hierarchies.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with studying power or exposing injustice. Human history supplies abundant evidence of both.
But what happens when one analytical framework becomes so dominant that it crowds out other ways of understanding human experience?
Is literature primarily an expression of artistic imagination and an exploration of the human condition—or principally a reflection of prevailing power structures? Is history an attempt to understand the past in all its complexity—or chiefly a search for patterns of domination and oppression?
These need not be mutually exclusive inquiries. But their relative emphasis matters.
And here we encounter the study’s most surprising finding: through all these changes, the vocabulary of truth has stubbornly persisted.
The Postmodern Paradox: Certain That Certainty Is Impossible?
Here is where things get particularly interesting.
Many influential academic frameworks emphasize the extent to which knowledge is shaped by language, culture, and social circumstances. Some go further, questioning whether we can attain objective truths independent of those influences.
Yet scholars employing these frameworks—and activists drawing upon them—can appear remarkably certain about their own conclusions. They confidently identify oppressive structures, pronounce judgments about injustice, and prescribe sweeping changes to society.
But on what grounds?
There is an enormous difference between saying that our understanding of reality is influenced by our circumstances and saying that truth itself is merely a product of those circumstances.
The first proposition contains genuine insight. None of us approaches the world without assumptions and cultural influences. The second is far more problematic.
Consider the genetic fallacy: judging an argument true or false simply because of where it comes from.
Suppose someone dismisses an argument about justice because it emerges from a Western, Christian, or capitalist tradition. That tells us something about the argument’s ancestry. It tells us nothing, by itself, about whether the argument is true.
The same principle applies to beliefs emerging from progressive or marginalized communities. Their origins neither establish nor invalidate their truth. Arguments must be evaluated on their merits, not merely their pedigree.
The problem becomes sharper when we move from truth to morality.
To declare a social arrangement unjust is to make a moral judgment. But according to what standard? If justice itself is merely a product of social conditioning and power relations, why should one group’s conception of justice be morally superior to another’s?
When truth and morality are reduced to expressions of power, while universal judgments about injustice are advanced with absolute confidence, a serious philosophical tension emerges.
And that tension becomes especially consequential when an intellectual framework becomes a program not merely for understanding society, but for remaking it.
When Scholarship Becomes a Program for Social Transformation
Karl Marx famously argued in his Theses on Feuerbach that philosophers had interpreted the world when the point was to change it.
That sentiment captures something important about contemporary activism: understanding society is not enough. Society must be transformed.
Consider the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), an organization I’ve examined extensively in earlier posts. Its published program illustrates how a comprehensive theory of social injustice can become a blueprint for reconstructing political and economic life.
The DSA’s 2026 program, Workers Deserve More, calls for public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries, abolition of the Senate, and replacement of the presidency and Supreme Court with institutions chosen by and subordinate to Congress. It also identifies the eventual abolition of police and prisons as an objective.
These are not modest adjustments to existing arrangements. The program envisions rebuilding society on fundamentally different foundations.
Its authors describe capitalism and existing political institutions, (contrary to empirical evidence) as systems that reproduce exploitation and inequality. Their proposed remedy is a democratic socialist society organized around working-class power.
Marxism and postmodernism, of course, are not identical philosophies. Marxism makes substantial claims about objective economic and historical reality, whereas certain postmodern theories question the foundations of such claims. Still, strands of contemporary activism combine Marxist class analysis with critical theories emphasizing race, gender, identity, and power.
And here the philosophical question becomes intensely practical.
What happens when a framework becomes so comprehensive that disagreement is interpreted mainly as evidence of privilege, oppression, or class interest? What happens when an objection is dismissed because of the supposed social position of the person making it, rather than answered on its merits?
The genetic fallacy can become a political habit.
I don’t doubt that many activists sincerely wish to remedy injustice. Nor are existing institutions beyond criticism. But sincerity is not wisdom, and identifying a genuine problem does not mean we fully understand its causes or possess a workable remedy.
The desire to make society more just is commendable. But justice requires more than identifying oppressors and redistributing power. It requires a truthful understanding of human beings themselves.
A Christian Anthropology: Why Truth Cannot Be Abolished
Christianity begins with a profoundly different understanding of the human person.
The world is not simply raw material awaiting reconstruction according to our preferred ideological vision. It is God’s Good Creation, possessing an intelligible order that precedes us. Nor are human beings infinitely malleable creatures whose nature can be endlessly redefined by changing social circumstances. We are embodied beings, created in the image of God as male and female, endowed with reason, moral responsibility, and the capacity to recognize truth and goodness.
This understanding resonates with the natural-law tradition, from Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas to contemporary philosophers such as Robert P. George.
George, together with philosopher Patrick Lee, has defended the equal and inherent dignity of human beings on the basis of our rational nature: our fundamental capacities for understanding, deliberation, and free choice. In the natural-law account, genuine human goods and moral obligations are accessible to reason, not exclusively to those who accept Christian revelation.
This matters enormously. Christians need not claim that only Christians can recognize injustice or discover moral truth. We can argue about what is good and just because human reason, however imperfectly exercised, is capable of apprehending a reality neither society nor government invents.
But Christianity adds another indispensable consideration: the Fall.
We are capable of knowing what is good, yet remarkably adept at deceiving ourselves. Pride, resentment, self-interest, and the desire for power can corrupt even our noblest intentions. We can sincerely believe we’re pursuing justice while remaining blind to the injustices we perpetuate.
And this isn’t merely a progressive or socialist problem. Conservatives and Christians face precisely the same temptations.
That recognition ought to cultivate humility, particularly when we propose sweeping changes to institutions developed across generations.
It also exposes a weakness in political theories that locate the principal source of human suffering in oppressive structures. Institutions certainly can be unjust, and Christians have compelling reasons to reform them. But the problem runs deeper. Human beings are not merely victims of defective institutions. We are moral agents whose disordered desires also create and sustain injustice.
Change the institutions, and you may improve society. But you will not thereby eliminate greed, envy, pride, or the appetite for domination.
The Christian understanding of humanity is therefore both hopeful and realistic. We possess genuine capacities for reason, goodness, and moral progress. But we are neither omniscient nor morally incorruptible.
Any political movement that forgets either side of that truth risks misunderstanding both the problems it seeks to remedy and the people it proposes to help.
Justice Without Utopianism: Activism Accountable to Truth
None of this means that Christians should retreat from public life or remain indifferent to injustice. Quite the contrary.
The biblical prophets condemned exploitation and corruption. Christians played important roles in abolitionism, the struggle for civil rights, and countless efforts to relieve suffering. The pursuit of justice is not optional for those who take Christian moral teaching seriously.
But there is a difference between seeking justice and assuming that our preferred political arrangements will necessarily produce it.
The late Catholic philosopher Michael Novak offers a valuable insight here. In The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, he emphasized three distinct but interdependent spheres: democratic political institutions, a free economy, and an independent moral-cultural order.
None can substitute for the others. Political power cannot manufacture virtue; economic prosperity cannot guarantee moral wisdom; even sound constitutional arrangements depend on citizens capable of exercising freedom responsibly.
This challenges political visions that locate the solution to human suffering principally in comprehensive institutional restructuring.
And it raises questions we should ask of every proposed reform. Does it accurately identify the problem? Does it account for human motivation, limits on knowledge, and unintended consequences? Does it preserve the dignity, freedom, and responsibility of the people it intends to help?
These are not excuses for inaction. They are requirements of responsible moral action.
The danger of ideological activism is not necessarily that its adherents care too much about justice. It is that certainty can make them insufficiently attentive to reality—especially facts that complicate their preferred solutions.
A Christian pursuit of justice must be governed by truth, tempered by humility, and informed by a realistic understanding of human nature.
Conclusion — Truth Before Transformation
The authors of Humanities in Crisis set out to examine sixty-five years of American scholarship. Among their most intriguing discoveries was something that had stubbornly endured: even as the language of identity and power expanded, the language of truth persisted.
But that finding raises the question: Can we meaningfully argue for justice without believing that some judgments are true and others false?
Christianity reminds us that reality is not ours to invent. We inhabit God’s Good Creation, possess the capacity to understand it, and bear responsibility for acting justly within it. Yet we are also fallen creatures, remarkably capable of confusing our convictions with wisdom and our ambitions with virtue.
The answer is not to abandon efforts to change the world. It is to recognize that even our noblest aspirations must be accountable to something greater than our own ideological certainty.
Truth must judge our activism. Activism must never become the judge of truth.
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