with the gradual encroachment of ideas.

” Not immediately, as he acknowledges, but after a certain

period of time. The ideas of people in current leadership positions are always those they took in during
their youth. “But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.”
The power of mere ideas is a matter about which intellectuals commonly deceive themselves and,
intentionally or not, also mislead the public. They constantly take in hand the most powerful factors in
human life, ideas, and most importantly, ideas about what is good and right. And how they handle and
live them thoroughly pervades our world in its every aspect. The complaint of the young Harvard
woman to Professor Coles is actually a complaint about a system of ideas: a system of ideas about what
is good and what is right. This system is one to which both President Bok and Professor Coles willingly
subject themselves. It is conveyed to students—and readers, consumers of intellectual product—
through the generations, and ever since the universities have become the authority centers of world
culture it is wordlessly conveyed to world society. It conveys itself as simple reality and does so in such a
way that it never has to justify itself. The truly powerful ideas are precisely the ones that never have to
justify themselves. The frequent attacks on “Modernity” and “Secularism”