The University's Role in Society

Understanding the University's Place and Role in American Culture and Society: How the University Works--Seeing It Whole

The academic and intellectual principles on which UC’s strength rests…are those on which all the free universities of our civilization have depended for nine centuries.  They need to be recalled, to be refreshed, to be remembered, to be honored, to be sustained.  They are not to be surrendered or relinquished…or bartered away for short-term gains or because they are inconvenient to defend or because of fiscal exigencies, donor pressures, political threats, or promises.  No.  They are to be advanced, defended, explained, and employed in the university’s service, costs or penalties aside.

And we should be reminded that our predecessors in the Western world, from the twelfth century on, somehow managed in the face of complacency, indifference, ignorance, hostility, or despair to raise the university's lamp high enough to illuminate not only the university's sense of its own purpose and future, but also its link to a more broadly civilized and cultured society.  Fiat lux.  (Earning My Degree, p. 4)

REFLECTIONS ON A CAREER
HOW THE UNIVERSITY WORKS
UNIVERSITIES IN THE LARGER CONTEXT

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