On persuasion
From Straight Man by Richard Russo:
I haven’t persuaded my freshmen that the ability to persuade is an important skill. …[P]ersuasion — reasoned argument — no longer holds a favored position in university life. If [students'] professors — feminists, Marxists, historicists, assorted other theorists — belong to suspicious, gated intellectual communities that are less interested in talking to each other than in staking out territory and furthering agendas, then why learn to debate? Despite having endured endless faculty meetings, I can’t remember the last time anyone changed his (or her!) mind as a result of reasoned discourse. Anyone who observed us would conclude the purpose of all academic discussion was to provide the grounds for becoming further entrenched in our original positions.
Although I publicly espouse the tenets of argumentation — because it worked on me and for me — I privately agree with Russo here, at least as regarding the majority of people.