Is it really possible that pretty much every single college and university around the country will, this fall, be welcoming its best-ever, most qualified, most curious, most diverse set of first-year students? Seems unlikely. In an interview with Evan Goldstein and Len Gutkin in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Andrew Delbanco offers an alternative. The interview is titled “Is Academic ‘Smugness’ on the Rise? Andrew Delbanco on humility, complacency, and the value of self-criticism” (August 7, 2026). Delbanco is Pofessor of American studies at Columbia University, In 2012, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal. He comments:
But to do serious academic work, research or teaching, self-doubt and curiosity — implying that there are things out there that you don’t already know and that you want to learn about — are central. Did there used to be more humility and less smugness? Having been in the academy now for more than 50 years, I’m inclined to say yes.
Some of the negative reaction to elite institutions is of their own making — a sense of superiority that we’ve got the answers figured out. If you’re inside the gates, you deserve something that people outside the gates don’t. If you think back to the very early days of the preeminent, Northeastern institutions, which all arose from one version of Protestantism or another, the president would have said to incoming students, “You are all worthless sinners. You’re here entirely by the grace of God. You haven’t earned it. What you should hope to achieve is a true sight of your own sinfulness and your own imperfection.” The speech today is: “Welcome to our great university. You are the best and brightest who have ever walked through the gate. We’re privileged to have you here.” That message should be mitigated or modulated.
