'Donald Rumsfeld' photo (c) 2011, Gage Skidmore - license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

One of Donald Rumsfeld’s most famous – if not his most famous – utterance was his “unknown unknowns” response at a press conference related to Iraq (you can see a video of it at the end of this post).

Now, filmmaker Errol Morris has just published The Certainty of Donald Rumsfeld (Part 1) over at The New York Times, the first in a four-part series.

I don’t know what the next three parts are going to look like, but this first one is full of great ideas for use in IB Theory of Knowledge classes.

In fact, between the Rumsfeld video and the abundance of insights in Morris’ column, I’m not even sure how or where to begin.

I’m going to ruminate a lot more on it, but I’m also hopeful that other TOK teachers will take a look at it and offer suggestions in the comments. Some of you may already be using the Rumsfeld video in your classes, and I can’t believe I haven’t thought about it prior to today!

Here’s the video: