One of the key roles of a parent is to teach. Parents pass along family history, values and tradition, including the faith.

Classic universities act in much the same way for society. They pass along the collective wisdom of civilization.

In his new book, The Skies of Babylon: Diversity, Nihilism and the American University, Augustinian Father Barry Bercier contends that the modern university has completely failed in its role as educator.

Father Bercier, professor of theology at Assumption College in Worcester, Mass., says that instead of teaching, universities are about the business of cultural parricide — and seek precisely to induct young people into its work.

Father Bercier spoke with Register correspondent Patrick Novecosky.

You contend that a symptom of a failed university system is that graduates have lost their desire to engender. What do you mean by that?

The classic university exists to pass on the life of Western civilization, to pass on the heritage. So the university is doing what the parents do; it’s giving life. It’s giving a way of life. When universities reject their own heritage, when they live simply in terms of progress deracinated from any kind of root, the result is something sterile, something that doesn’t give life. Giving life means receiving life and the university has been rejecting the life of the past.

How did the modern university go astray?

It goes way back to people like Rene Descartes. He addressed the university of his time, suggesting that they switch their curriculum from the passing on of tradition to a place that would develop his new science. At that point, the university began to abandon its role of passing on this heritage.

The university serves the culture it lives in. I see modernity, in some sense, as an effort to do away with or escape from the past. This leads to the failure to educate.

Has nihilism come with that? Has it supplanted a Christian worldview?

Yes. Even on a Catholic campus like Assumption, relatively speaking, there are a lot of students and a good number of educators who don’t find hope rising out of the word that comes to us from the past. God reveals himself in history. That’s the Christian way of looking at things, but if you’re looking only into the future, you want to do away with what was past. That future is a little like the old science fiction movies where you’re heading out into deep deep space. There was a funny feeling that pervaded those movies. It’s a feeling of nothingness, of utter disorientation. Universities have been moving in the direction of nihilism for a long time.

What do these modern universities see as their purpose?

That’s hard to say. I think they see themselves as advancing the human project somehow, producing a world where things are vaguely understood to be “better.” But if we examine it closely, better means “more and more according to human will for a life that’s secure, comfortable, at peace.” But it’s forced into that situation by those who control it. There’s a totalitarian thrust to a purely secular education.

You also state that “there’s an ideological fog that envelops academia.” Has that fog always been there or is it something relatively new?

I think it’s something new. By “ideological fog,” I mean that there’s a use of language, a development of language that makes it difficult to express the ancient truths. I refer to the story of the Tower of Babel in the book, which is where I get the title. In that very small biblical text, you see many plays on words. You see words being transformed even as natural things are transformed into artificial things for the building of this city.

People talk about politically correct language — things you can say and things you can’t say. I served as campus minister for a semester up at Bates College in Maine. They asked me to be part of a board that was going to put together a “speech code.” I said, “No, thank you.” I didn’t want anything to do with that.

I was just reading the paper where a student referred to homophobia. What is the origin of that word? How old is the reality it points to? Why was it not named until the 20th century? The word smacks of something artificial.

When enough of those words gain currency, you’re speaking with words that create a fog. The nice thing about standard English is that these words go far into the past. If you cut off that language and come up with words that have entirely new meanings, it gets harder and harder to discern the truth.

Why did you ground your reflection in Jerusalem as opposed to Athens as Allan Bloom did in The Closing of the American Mind?

I think Jerusalem is the deeper root of the West. The extraordinary notion of human dignity that comes from the biblical tradition is at the heart of Western civilization. It’s the thing most to be preserved — even more than the Greek philosophical notion of reason. It has a more universal thrust to it and more universal power.

What is the Judeo-Christian influence on the American university?

The university, to use that word in its fullness, is an exceedingly important institution in Western civilization. So the secular universities in America have a serious responsibility toward America and toward passing on to future generations of Americans the heritage that is their foundation. That heritage includes the Judeo-Christian tradition. America cannot continue to be if it separates itself entirely from that origin.

The secular university is sharing this responsibility with the Catholic university in a way that the religiously related schools — Catholic, Jewish, Protestant — provide an essential element in the general tenor of education in America.

You also talk about diversity in the book. Is diversity such a bad thing?

Diversity is a wonderful thing. At a well-run university, you’re going to have an incredible diversity. I think of this school here [Assumption College] when I was a student myself. It was a much smaller place, but there were all sorts of characters. I can think of the kind of characters that made up my neighborhood when I was growing up.

When people are flourishing in their humanity, when they’re being nurtured on what our civilization has to offer, as they flourish, they diversify. Nobody was out seeking diversity; they were just seeking to become human. To become human, you become diverse. The odd thing is that, all of a sudden, there are imposed diversity policies that impose a standardized version of what diversity means. We’re going to measure it in terms of numbers and racial composition. I see a problem with that kind of diversity.

There is another kind where diversity is used to cover over a welcoming of what should be called “perversity.” To praise diversity without a thought of the human standard that you should be seeking to achieve, to praise an unrooted diversity is to lose your capacity to distinguish between good and evil — or noble and base. That’s what I see is going on here with diversity. It’s saying, “You can’t make difficult value judgments. You just have to accept whatever happens to float by your face.”

Are there bright spots?

I would limit myself to what’s happening right here at Assumption. The board of trustees, the Assumptionists and other faculty members recognize that the college was drifting from its authentic mission. When the last president retired, we made a concerted effort to get a president who was alert to the Catholic intellectual tradition. We’ve got him. Francesco Cesareo is his name. He came here this summer.

With a solid intellectual background and good will, you can reform these Catholic universities. There’s a market out there for Catholic universities that stand for the best in the intellectual tradition.

Patrick Novecosky writes from

Naples, Florida.