University | 5:19 pm | December 20, 2012 | By Jane Darby Menton

David Brooks to teach ‘Humility’

New York Times columnist David Brooks will teach a course entitled “Humility” this spring.

The course will examine “the premise that human beings are blessed with many talents, but are also burdened by sinfulness, ignorance and weakness,” according to Yale OCI. Brooks told the New York Magazine that while he recognized the course’s name might garner snarky comments, the study of these topics can be a guide for life.

“The title of the Humility course is, obviously, intentionally designed to provoke smart ass jibes, but there’s actually a serious point behind it,” Brooks said. “People from Burke to Niebuhr, Augustine to Dorothy Day, Montaigne to MLK and Samuel Johnson to Daniel Kahneman have built philosophies around our cognitive, moral and personal limitations.”

Rolling Stone blogger Matt Taibbi, a frequent Brooks critic, quipped Wednesday that Brooks teaching a class about humility might be “the most pretentious moment in history,” calling Brooks a “notorious diploma-sniffing aristocrat-apologist douchebag.”

Brooks is currently a senior fellow at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, and has previously taught courses at Yale and Duke.

Comments