Democracy in an era of enormously complex global constellations and powers requires a people who are educated, thoughtful, and democratic in sensibility. This means a people modestly knowing about these constellations and powers; a people with capacities of discernment and judgment in relation to what it reads, watches, or hears about a range of developments in its world; and a people oriented toward common concerns and governing itself. Such knowledge, discernment, and orientation are what a university liberal arts education has long promised and what are now severely challenged by neoliberal rationality inside and outside universities. Contesting this challenge democratically would place us squarely within Rousseau's paradox: to support good institutions, the people must be antecedently what only good institutions can make them. The survival of liberal arts education depends on broad recognition of its value for democracy. The survival of democracy depends upon a people educated for it, which entails resisting neoliberalization of their institutions and themselves.

Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, loc. 397