From the Rack The Embattled University

DAEDALUS, Winter. 1970

ONE of the favorite devices of intellectual journals is to collect a number of articles or essays on the same topic from a group of well known scholars, and bind them all together with a general introduction. The result is called a "symposium." and usually consists of 20 or so vague essays all saying the same thing about one general topic. The viewpoint expressed in the articles will be the accepted moderate-liberal position, with perhaps one ?? and one conservative thrown in for balance D?? the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, is often guilty of this sort of thing, but this-time the quality of its product is higher. The Winter, 1970, issue has brought together 11 university scholars and administrators for a generally inventive analysis of the problems of the university. A good spectrum of opinion is represented in this issue, with contributors ranging from Clark Kerr to Stanley Hoffman, and each essay has its own perspective on the university.

The issue opens with a piece by Martin Trow the sociologist from Berkeley, who touches on a variety of topics. He traces the growth of the university since the War, and the problems created by growth.

The increasing number of students going on to college has led to a demand that the university become a "service" institution, turning out people with useful skills, offering its resources to industry, to the military, perhaps even to urban problems. This demand has caused a division of labor among universities. Some, mostly state universities, have given in and become service institutions, others have remained centers of scholarship. Even within faculties, the "service" people are insulated from the pure scholars. But the service which the university provides to the military and to industry causes increasing politicization, and so even the lnsufated scholars are drawn in to the realm of politics. In this situation, the trustees of the university are caught between an angry faculty demanding academic freedom and a public calling for firm measures to deal with left wing students and faculty. This conflict of interest which the trustees must face is probably unresolvable, and in any case is growing worse.

Trow's conclusions are pessimistic. He forecasts more repressive sanctions by the public and the authorities against disruptions within the university, a greater migration of scholars out of the university and into research foundations, a sharper distinction than ever before between "service," and scholarly institutions, and the evolution of a new kind of undergraduate education for those students who demand "relevance" -students who, in his view, do not belong in college anyway.

THE RADICAL perspective of the next essay contradicts Trow's argument. Jill Conway, a young historian at the University of Toronto, thinks that the problem is a basic misapprehension of the social function of the university in America. Miss Conway maintains that the young radicals have correctly understood what the political function of the university is in this country. The university exists to create a professional elite, and it is the irresponsibility of that elite in isolating itself from the basic human problems of the oppressed while participating in industrial and defensive research which has caused the crisis of the university. The curriculum must be made relevant to human needs, and examinations and grading abolished. She suggests that students be admitted to the university to study with a single faculty member for as long as they want, and receive their degrees after passing a pass-fail examination, which could be taken at any point in the student's career. Between college and graduate school, students should be placed in some form of social service, in which they can apply their education to relevant human needs. The article concludes with the suggestion that the concept of the university as a place for fostering pure learning is outdated, and that, if the university is to survive, it must make itself relevant.

ATHIRD contributor raises some nasty Freudian questions about radical youth. Erik Erikson postulates that youth is a kind of "psychological moratorium," during which young people are entitled to experiment with styles of behavior, and utopian models of human society, without being held accountable. Youth experiments with the Marxist model, putting itself in the role of the proletariat, or with the Gandhian model, putting itself in the role of the non-violent, oppressed colonial, and thus becomes part of the "revolt of the dependent." Youth in development is dependent upon society, as are colonials and the proletariat, and to be dependent means to be exploited. Erikson ascribes various forms of adolescent belief to the moral and premoral stages of childhood development and the search for a premoral paradise unblemished by sin. He also gives a fascinating explanation of violent radical behavior. Such amoral development, he says, is related to the second, or andal-urethral, stage of human development which takes place in the second of third year. The amoral position, represented by members of motorcycle gangs and other tadieals who believe in the correctness of violence, is an assertion of the sense of autonomy, transcending the sense of shame, or doubt. The free use of obscenity and disrespectful terms for persons in authority, is a recapitulation of vulgar infantile aggression patterns involving the use of excrement. So-called "permissiveness," actually the inhibition of parental anger, leaves the rage of both parent and child untested, and so in later life the child of a permission parent is likely to revert to this stage of development in an attempt to express his anger. ?? this retrogression is latent in most ???? it is expressed mostly in the ???? and pranks.

AN AKT?? Abram disposes of ?? the did of Freudian ?? president of Brandeis, ?? in the midst of a revalue-?? only be neutral ?? commitment, and its ?? of education. The university ?? to be politicized beyond this commitment, ?? for this would spell its ?? that the university is faced with the ?? of students who demand "re??." Abram rejects the contention-put forth by Trow, that they should be barred from the community. ??kewise, he rejects the idea that the university should be completely responsive to these students.

THE OTHER essays cover a broad perspective. Stanley Hoffman contends that discussion of governance and restructuring obscures the issue at hand, which is the very basis of the university itself. Peter Caws synthesizes a model for a "fair" university, fair both to those inside it and out of it, and places much of the blame for the problems of American education on what he calls a "fourth rate" educational systems at all levels.

On the whole, all these efforts are well thought out and well worth reading. Each one represents the view of a different man, in a different discipline, and usually in a different institution from all the other contributors, with a unique viewpoint. If any criticism can be made, it is that the more radical of the contributors have chosen to indulge in theatric, rather than in a systematic critique of the university, and that certain of the administrators represented here have written in vague generalities more appropriate to a president's annual report or the position paper of a Senate candidate than to a serious scholar's essay. Both public and private universities are represented and each undergoes a searching critique. The university must certainly follow one or another of the paths suggested for it in this journal.