When Truth is No Longer Paramount

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | May 20, 2026 | John M. Kainer

[karpov]

It is a running joke with my repeat students that “it depends” is the phrase most likely to set me off during a classroom discussion.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand context matters, and we should strive to see as much of the picture as possible. Still, repeated appeals to “it depends” by the same student reveal a very different intent. In most cases, the student is using “it depends” as an excuse not to think carefully, substituting feelings for reason.

Such students risk nothing in class discussion, insulating their beliefs and ideas from challenge in precisely the place where they are supposed to be challenged. Too often, professors allow them to get away with it.

In a similar vein, you’ve probably heard people appeal to “my truth,” but this phrase gets the relationship between the self and truth exactly backwards. It is the truth that lays claim to us, not the other way around. Worse, it suggests to the student and their peers that the truth is radically subjective, that is, the truth of an idea depends on the individual’s willingness to accept it. This is becoming common in various “soft” academic fields where academics want to escape rigorous examination of their ideas by saying “That’s my truth.”

When the university tolerates or encourages this kind of behavior in students and faculty, it suspends the principles and values that give the university legitimacy and authority, which are intrinsic to the educational enterprise.

For most of their history, universities operated on the assumption that truth exists independently of our preferences, and scholarship is the disciplined attempt to understand it. Different fields developed different methods, for example, clinical trials in medicine, archival research in history, and quantitative analysis in sociology.

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TOPICS: Education
KEYWORDS: academia; college

[MortMan]

The article is wrong - partially. “It depends” is an answer in search of information. The validity of the answer depends on whether the information sought is subjective or objective. If subjective, the answerer is asking the questioner to invalidate their prejudices - and that is why the author objects.

If the information sought is objective, it is a clarification against a rule - that is, it is providing information obscured by the questioner because the answer is unfavorable to them, in my experience.

[fruser1]

Such students risk nothing in class discussion

Unless your teacher is a leftist.

[Ronaldus Magnus III]

Scholarship in those areas is not evaluated primarily on methodological rigor, but on whether the findings support approved moral conclusions

Reminds me of the "PhD" in Anthropology answering Riley Gaines question about our ability to identify male and female skeletons we excavate. When the "PhD" stated that we cannot determine it, most of the room laughed, and the "PhD" was very unhappy.

I have known dozens of PhDs. Most were great. Others, not so much. Some PhDs need to remain in the laboratory, and keep away from teaching.

The anthropologist PhD reinforces that PhD can really stand for
Piled
higher &
Deeper

[Steely Tom]

I have the same visceral reaction to people who answer a question with “yes and no.”

[Inyo-Mono]

...the truth of an idea depends on the individual’s willingness to accept it.

I have actually run into this and have found it baffling.

[bigred44]

I work with young engineers. I am always irritated when I ask them something and they say, “I’m not 100% sure.” That means they have no idea.

[Alberta's Child]

Good point. “It depends” is also a valid response if the answer to a question is conditional.

Is the sun up or down at midnight? In most cases it is definitely down, but “It depends” is the correct answer because it would be up if you’re in a polar region during the summer months.

[FreedomPoster]

“I don’t know but I can find out” is a much better answer in that situation.

[T.B. Yoits]

I work with young engineers. I am always irritated when I ask them something and they say, “I’m not 100% sure.” That means they have no idea.

Be grateful that they're being honest, even if downplaying the amount they don't know.

It could be far, far worse, especially when dealing with foreigners who would instead lie without blinking an eye, either out of sheer Dunning-Kruger ignorance, or to deceptively cover up their incompetence.

[libertylover]

I work with young engineers. I am always irritated when I ask them something and they say, “I’m not 100% sure.” That means they have no idea.

I'd rather someone not be sure than someone who will tell you like they do know it all when in fact, they know very little about what you asked them.

[Carry_Okie]

The former Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith wrote an excellent book in 2014 about the “sacred project” of American sociology. Smith demonstrates that much of modern sociology integrates progressive political thinking into research design and teaching.

Sociology was a progressive enterprise from the beginning. It initially strove for the trappings of "science" as part of the pitch. But the very idea that variables in human interactions can be neglected just as massless ropes, frictionless pulleys, or chemical purity can be neglected for the purpose of mathematical analysis of human social behavior is absurd. After all, consider hormones or multigenerational epigenetics.

[Uncle Miltie]

Gerald Eyrich Claremont McKenna College Economics Professor had us really bright kids in the last top micro-economics class, “Theory of the Firm”.

On the very last day of our Senior Year, he started asking questions which seemed to have pat Econ 101 answers, so we gave them to him. For 30 minutes, we were treated to his demonstration that in all these cases we thought we were sure about, the answer was really “It Depends”, and he would demonstrate why.

Then without missing a beat he asked more questions for the next 30 minutes, and having been just trained by him to “It Depends”, we started answering that way and formulating on what it depended. And we were wrong. He had switched to economic absolutes. So for 30 minutes he demonstrated objective truths.

That was the last lesson at Claremont. To know when something depends and on what it depends, or whether something is an absolute.

Gerry Eyrich, like all of the Claremont education, was teaching us to THINK.

[MV=PY]

Half of them are below average (assuming Gaussian distribution).

;)

[MikelTackNailer]

Half of them are below average (assuming Gaussian distribution).

I accept the challenge to communicate as the price for exceptionalism. It's not "dumbing down" if it helps restructure an explanation where it can be understood by a wider audience.

But my first thought on seeing this thread was what Joe Biden answers when asked "Boxers or briefs?".