360. Higher Education: The Great Shift (1)

I would say that in the 73 years that I have been observing higher education in this country nothing has changed more profoundly than our primary goal.  Where it once was knowledge it is now goodness.

In my university, as in many others, it began with the installation of African-American Studies as an academic department.  The aim was to reduce the injustice done to blacks.  Incorporation of such studies into one of the traditional divisions of  liberal education — here that would have been sociology or cultural anthropology or history — would not, it was thought, reduce it enough.  Reducing injustice is good. 

Since this is a sensitive subject I want to say that there is nothing arch in my use of the word "good" here.   I really mean "good," mean it as Greek philosophers meant it, and I think it is the right word for what those who moved universities to establish these and Women's Studies programs were striving for and, in varying degrees, achieved.

At the time it was clear to some but not to all that one cannot do this and still remain within the academic tradition. The origins of that tradition, and its difference from other traditions, are best exhibited by Socrates' activity.  In Plato's dialogue Euthyphro, for example, the title character is presented striving, and helping people strive, for a prime Athenian virtue, piety.  Questioning by Socrates shows, however, that he knows very little about piety, barely enough to keep the concept of it together.  Readers, students, come away believing that it is best to know before you strive. Knowledge takes precedence over goodness.

That's the signature belief of the heirs of Socrates, college professors.  When they go into the world they show it in their signature advice: "Look before you leap."  When that advice was given at my university it got, for years, at least a bored respect.  Then in the sixties we heirs got a surprise.  Say "look before you leap" at a rally, sit down gravely, and a student gets up and says, "and look, and look, and look."  Urgent goodness takes precedence over knowledge.

This change eased the establishment of AAS and Women's Studies programs, which made harmonious appearances in the catalog.  But the disharmony remained.  I have to guess at this, since I am way out of touch, but when I now see an AAS course titled "History of Injustice" I can't imagine an introduction examining the concept of "justice."  I can imagine Socrates questioning this striver for justice as he questioned the striver for piety.

There are occasions, like when aid to escaped slaves, or ratification of the 13th Amendment, was in question in Northern states, when the tradition of goodness, coming to us mainly through our religion and saying "Leap, leap," is strong enough to win out over the tradition of knowledge, and make us professors glad it did.  I think the strike at San Francisco State in 1968, when affirmative action and formation of Black Studies were in question, was one if those occasions — though the happiness of many professors may have had more to do with simply gaining civil peace.

The question I am pressing here can be seen as a fussy-professor question: "With which victories am I free to be glad and with which am I not free?"  I think that a professor who fusses enough has to answer, "I am free to be glad about victories out in the world; I am not free to be glad about victories in universities."  That means he (or she) can be glad about affirmative action laws but can't be glad about African-American Studies programs.  That may be an "academic" conclusion, but it translates into a consequential vote at the faculty senate.

In the faculty senate votes of those days you could see coming the goodness-ruled university of the future.  The rule that started in the catalog went on into codes of behavior for extra-curricular activities and social events, codes of dress (as for costume-wearers at Halloween), and codes of speech for meetings and conferences, even classrooms.  And like all dominant rule this rule, though recognized as moral and generally approved, produced its tyrants, making it resented (see Post 340 on disciplinary actions at Harvard), and its busybodies, making it laughed at (see Post  319 on the excesses of "political correctness").

Both the resentment and the laughter can be dismissed as accompaniments of every movement to the good, but beneath them was a dissonance not so easily dismissed. 

Some of my readers must have felt it.  How about in the Commencement procession?  On one side of you is a professor of African-American Studies who, as you've reasoned it out, is there because what she is striving for is a good that must, even in a traditionally neutral institution, be supported.  Though she is much of the time a knower, and in much of her activity passes on knowledge as rigorously obtained as any in the procession, she is there because she is a striver, and able to help strivers.

On the other side of you is a Professor of History, a knower in the strict academic tradition — meaning coming straight from Socrates through Plato's Academy and the liberally educating Renaissance schools to today's liberal arts colleges.   He fits right into this traditionally neutral institution.

What do you feel, there between them?  Suppose the Professor of History feels resentment, and you sense it.  What are your thoughts?

[Since this, I see, is going to be too much for one post I'll have to leave it there.  To be resumed.]