Tennessee WordSmith: A Liberal Dose, October 5, 2025 "Free Should the Scholar Be, Free and Brave"

A Liberal Dose, October 5, 2025

"Free Should the Scholar Be, Free and Brave"

Troy D. Smith

Every fall since 2012 (except the year I was faculty senate president and had a lighter teaching load), I have taught a section of what Tennessee Tech University calls HONORS 1010. It is basically an orientation class for incoming Honors freshmen. I am one of several people who teach it each fall. The goal, both of the Honors program and of myself, has always been to make students think deeply about WHY they are in college, what it is for, and what it can be used for, instead of an exercise in jumping through hoops and learning how to fill out paperwork. It is my particular goal to inspire students in their first semester. There is nothing wrong in going to college to do well, I tell them... but you can also go to college to do GOOD.

For most of those years, I have been sharing with students an excerpt from Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay "The American Scholar," a work I was first exposed to as a college freshman (thanks, Linda Mercer Learman!) I read the excerpt to them, pausing here and there to reframe the prose in 21st century vernacular to make sure they understand. To my delight, this year the director of the Honors program has recommended that everyone teaching the class share this excerpt and discuss it.

I actually wrote about "The American Scholar" two or three years ago in my newspaper column, which as you may know was canceled recently due to a dramatic uptick in threats against my life. But I am revisiting it, because it is more pertinent now than it has ever been... and because it is more pertinent to ME than it has ever been.

Here is the excerpt from "The American Scholar," first delivered as a speech by Emerson in 1837, that I share:

"In self-trust, all the virtues are comprehended. Free should the scholar be, — free and brave. Free even to the definition of freedom, 'without any hindrance that does not arise out of his own constitution.' Brave; for fear is a thing which a scholar, by his very function puts behind him. Fear always springs from ignorance. It is a shame to him if his tranquility, amid dangerous times, arise from the presumption, that, like children and women, his is a protected class; or if he seek a temporary peace by the diversion of his thoughts from politics or vexed questions, hiding his head like an ostrich in the flowering bushes, peeping into microscopes, and turning rhymes, as a boy whistles to keep his courage up. So is the danger a danger still; so is the fear worse. Manlike let him turn and face it. Let him look into its eye and search its nature, inspect its origin, — see the whelping of this lion, — which lies no great way back; he will then find in himself a perfect comprehension of its nature and extent; he will have made his hands meet on the other side, and can henceforth defy it, and pass on superior. The world is his, who can see through its pretension. What deafness, what stone-blind custom, what overgrown error you behold, is there only by sufferance, — by your sufferance. See it to be a lie, and you have already dealt it its mortal blow."

And here are my thoughts, interpretations, and re-phrasings of it:

A scholar -a seeker of knowledge and learning -must be brave. They must face the political issues of their day, no matter how scary they are, because being a scholar does not give you a free pass when it comes to danger and controversy -if anything, it puts you in the crosshairs. The scholars are always among the first classes that authoritarians and dictators come for, lest they continue to bring understanding, education, or inspiration to the people. For that matter, so are the poets, the artists, and even the comedians.

So turn and face those issues, those problems. The more you learn about them, the less frightening they are. Once you gain knowledge about those issues, it is your duty to spread it -because, at that point, any of the bad things plaguing us all can only do so if YOU ALLOW IT. So do not allow it. Do not be silent. Do not be fearful.

Emperors, autocrats, and tyrants hold power only insomuch as people believe it to be hopeless to oppose them. It is never hopeless. To paraphrase a certain Jedi Master, they can never win -for if they strike us down they only make us stronger. They act always in weakness, never in true strength. Never in truth.

The world is his who can see through its pretension. See it to be a lie, and you have already dealt it its mortal blow.

So look up from your microscopes, your rhymes, and the misleading safety of your diversions. Take your head out of the sand. It is time to look around us with courage, with determination, and to light our way with the sacred torch of truth and knowledge.

To be free, you must be brave.

--Troy D. Smith is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU., nor are they connected in any way with his job- they are his own opinions on matters of public concern, and an expression of his First Amendment freedom of speech.

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE