Giving Compass' Take:

• Grant Cornwell argues that liberal arts education is an avenue for avoiding the damage of lies and misinformation that permeate our culture today. 

• What are the elements of liberal arts education that help to fight truth decay? How can funders help to spread learning on this topic to all groups? 

• Learn more about fighting truth decay. 

Our current cultural moment has raised an urgent question: What is the role of higher education at a time when the very ideas of truth, facts and core principles of justice seem up for grabs? At a time like this, I would argue that liberal arts education is more urgently needed than ever before.

In the anti-intellectualism of our current political culture, I see a smug, perhaps even sinister, disregard for the value of truth and its pursuit with integrity. Maybe worse, I see a dismissiveness towards the knowing of facts — or worse still, a cavalier disposition towards facts as though they are things that can be selected or even created according to one's preference and politics.

What is true has been displaced by what reinforces one's ideology and politics — and ideology trumps facts. I see this as a threat to democracy.

This is where the university — with its core principles of freedom of inquiry and expression, and its capacity to educate graduates with the independent and critical acumen to deliberate about all manner of issues — plays a critical role.

The larger theme here is the role of higher education in general and liberal education in particular in a democracy founded on principles of freedom and equality. After all, the term "liberal" in that context is not a reference to political values. Rather, it comes from the Latin, artes liberales, an education in personal liberty or freedom. It is an education not in what to think but how to think; it is a process of becoming free from bias, ignorance, and authoritarian control over thought.

Read the full article about truth decay by Grant Cornwell at Education Dive.