Consider the recent furor on many of our college campuses: Large numbers of students acted in support of Hamas, certain that Israel was the party in the wrong. Was that certainty justified? Had they ever bothered to question their beliefs? Evidently not.

University of Illinois sociology professor Ilana Redstone has written a book entitled The Certainty Trap, and in today’s Martin Center article, she explains why it’s important for educators to try to get students out of their certainty traps — and also to escape their own.

She writes: “The trap is the result of a narrow, sloppy way of thinking that’s gone unchecked in higher education for years. It’s ultimately a failure to question, challenge, or clarify our thinking in a way that has blurred the line between interpretations and truth.”

Unfortunately, narrow, sloppy thinking is very common these days, and probably becoming more so. It’s so easy for someone, when confronted by an individual who holds a different view on some contentious issue, to merely declare, “You’re obviously just a racist” (or some other slur) rather than try to understand that person’s point of view and question his own knowledge.

Redstone points to three fallacies that lead to certainty traps: the settled question fallacy, the equal knowledge fallacy, and the known intent fallacy. They’re all prevalent on our campuses, in our media, and almost everywhere else where political issues arise.

Read the whole thing.