On the University
“Except perhaps for big time soccer, the university seems to have become the most nearly universal manmade institution in the modern world.†– Jaroslav Pelikan, The Idea of the University: A Reexamination
I’ve been resisting posting about this, but here goes anyway. Funmi Arewa, guest blogging at Conglomerate, raises a set of questions about the purposes and functions of the university that has been percolating around the blogosphere recently in the wake of Larry Summers’ resignation from Harvard. Geoff Manne posted some thoughtful comments, and some helpful links, at Truth on the Market. Posner and Becker both weighed in as well.
I was going to write about how the focus on the instrumental aspects of university governance, which is implicit in each of these posts (and more explicit in some), overlooks what I regard as the hugely important symbolic economy that surrounds them, and that lies at the core of Jaroslav Pelikan’s book. (Above, I’ve quoted Pelikan’s opening line.) The members of the Harvard Corporation and the Yale Corporation don’t really “represent” anyone or any group so much as they “represent” the values embedded in the concept of the university — whatever those still are.
But I’m largely preempted by William Stuntz‘s apocalyptic critique of the Harvard affair in TNR Online (reg. required). (HT: Rick Garnett, Prawfsblawg.) Professor Stuntz writes: