Tell Me No Lies?

In one sense it might be said that the whole academic enterprise became something of a fraud the moment postmodern relativism began to reign within its hallowed halls. To declare that there is no truth, the better to enforce leftist indoctrination in diversity, multiculturalism, sustainability, political correctness, and the like is certainly a gross and dishonorable violation of what the transmission and impartation of knowledge is meant to be. And our special section in this issue, “Frauds, Fallacies, Fads, and Fictions,” zeroes in on instances of how preordained political goals corrupt the scholarly enterprise. What the perpetrators of these fictions have in common is a slippery relationship to truth and the very idea of truth, and a tendency to resort to name-calling and ad hominem attacks when challenged. We can take comfort in that all of these frauds and fictions