regret. that's a song by ben folds, right?

A few weeks ago, I went to a lecture at Columbia called “Freedom and the University.” One of my former professors was speaking on the panel, along with three other well-known professors of history, literature and law. There was a lot of talk about the unhealthy influence of the Israel lobby in determining the hiring and firing of certain professors, as well as the recent attempts by some state legislatures to rid the classroom of political belief and put an end to the “indoctrination” of students by liberal professors.

I was really sad that no one re-enacted the trial of Socrates. Other than that, the conclusions drawn were what you’d expect. Everybody agreed that academics and students should be free to write and say what they want without fear of retribution from the state or the university. Higher education must be a place of free debate, where political concerns are vital but not controlling. How you achieve that, though, is a question no one addressed.

I’ve joked before that Chicago indoctrinated me, though in the opposite way than most other universities would have. From the moment I stepped on campus, I was consistently told that most of what I thought I knew was wrong. I remember one incident in particular, when a grad student TA opened a discussion section by saying, “So, who can tell me why everything Thomas Friedman writes is incorrect?” At that point, I loved Friedman. From Beirut to Jerusalem was one of my all-time top five books in high school. My TA was just being provocative, though, and indoctrination in no way invites provocative debate. In reality, high school was way more indoctrinating than college. I never actually had to defend what I thought, so I never really questioned it. In college I was constantly wrong, until I figured out that actually, everyone else was wrong too. It was great.

This subject was on my mind even before the lecture, actually, because of the Regrets Pamphlet , which was published by N+1 a couple weeks ago. I admit I have not read the pamphlet, but I’ve skimmed it, and I’ve read a lot about it. (It even friended me on facebook. No kidding.) Basically, it’s a series of witty dialogues between the editors of N+1 and their friends, and it includes a list of books each participant thinks everyone should read in college. Ostensibly, they want you to not regret your education. For me, though, the whole point of college was to be stupid, and then to regret it.

I, for one, regret taking that dumb world literatures class, instead of something actually challenging. I regret not taking a grad class on Nietzsche. I regret taking that bio class on the development of fish embryos, instead of reading Habermas and Weber, or finishing the Peloponnesian War. At the end of the day, though, I couldn’t be sure I didn’t give a shit about fish embryos or the globalization of widgets until I had to regret reading about them, just like I didn’t know I cared about philosophy until I started to regret not reading more of it.

We all regret that time we drank so much we puked, but doesn’t it generally keep us from ever drinking that much again? To this day I can’t stand the sight of Bacardi 151, and in the long run, that’s a good thing. At this point, I could say something totally trite and inane, like, “life is meaningless without regret,” but I’ll refrain. I will say, though, that the Regrets Pamphlet is being sold for $9, so clearly, regret is worth something.