ABSTRACT
Courage is a virtue of the mind because the life of the mind—inquiring, criticizing, investigating—exposes us to a variety of harms: infringements on one’s interests. An important modern example is the distinguished climate scientist, Michael Mann, the originator of the famous ‘hockey stick’ graph, depicting temperature changes over the last thousand years. Since the graph proved a powerful symbol, Mann was soon under active, concerted attack from well-funded organizations that are hostile, on economic or ideological grounds, to acceptance of anthropogenic climate change. The Wall Street Journal and Fox News castigated his work and questioned his character, the Commonwealth Foundation tried to pressure his employer, Penn State University, to fire him, an envelope containing white powder was posted to his house, and Joe Barton, the climate-denialist chair of the House Energy Committee, tried to subpoena the personal records of Mann and his co-authors.
