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In Defense of the University's Core Values
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14758 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1988 |
4,279 Words |
| Author
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John H. Bunzel
John H. Bunzel, former president of San Jose State University,
was a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 1983-
86. He is a senior research fellow at Stanford University's
Hoover Institution. |
Both the time and the need are at hand for the higher-education community to review its concerns and experiences with the fundamental values that are the cornerstone of a university, which today are being threatened in ways that are new to most of us. I do not mean to suggest that any of the well-established and hard-fought meanings of academic freedom having to do with the right of professionally qualified persons to think, write, speak, and inquire without interference are out of fashion or that they have been trans-valued in any appreciable way. Far from it. Academic freedom is not a minor conceit. I simply mean that we need to turn our attention to some of the recent and more novel challenges to the special and essential character of our colleges and universities that have arisen since that most conspicuous campus crisis of twenty years ago.
Some of these new challenges are not yet mature enough to be readily recognizable. They are a bit like Yeats' rough beast slouching toward academia, waiting to be born. And like the rough beast drooling over Little Red Riding Hood, they often present themselves as benedictions. It is these maledictions, all too often dressed in sheep's clothing, that should give pause to anyone whose life's commitment is to the academic world.
Let me make clear at the outset what I believe are the core values of a university. (It is because I believe in these values and the fragile understandings on which they rest that I recognize how closely our freedoms resemble our obligations.) There are two models of a university. Neither of them comes in pure form. The differences between them, however, are profound and serious. The question--and, in my judgment, the critical question before every faculty in the country--is which university we choose for ourselves.
Two Views of the University
The first model is of a politicized university whose role is to perform as an institution of social activism to bring about change in national policies. Its primary concerns are with political action and social reform. It is prepared to use its resources as a university for what it deems to be worthy political goals--to support disinvestments in South Africa, to oppose racism and injustice, and so on. Often repelled by the surrounding culture, it seeks to transform it. Its stance is political because it believes that the time has come for the university to become a base for decisive action for those of high moral purpose.
There is
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