Too many modern universities — for centuries hallowed halls that encouraged passionate debate — have lost their way.

The first universities, Plato’s Academy (387 B.C.) and Aristotle’s Lyceum (335 B.C.), were built on Socrates’ conviction that truth emerges from passionate, open debate.

For centuries, universities were places in which sharp minds shredded weak ideas to give life to the most enduring truths — about science, politics, philosophy and human nature.

The Romans incorporated the Greek devotion to reason and rhetoric into their forums and courts.

Cicero (106-43 B.C.) argued that a republic could only survive if citizens were trained to reason together.

In the Middle Ages, when Aristotle’s works were rediscovered through Arabic and Latin translations, disputation — the formal p

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