WASHINGTON — What is your vision of a
university?
Is it the classic vision with profs walking the ivy clad
pathways, their books under their arms? Perhaps they wear tweed
coats and smoke pipes — not the lady profs but the men. The ladies
dress accordingly, and maybe they smoke pipes. All pore over their
books for hours and impart their knowledge to a select body of
students. Not the mob that today is forced — rather cruelly — to
attend classes in remedial education to make up for what they
missed in high school, very elementary things such as reading and
the rudiments of writing.
No, not at all — the profs are indistinguishable from the
students today. Most are disgruntled. Some are furious. In years
gone by they felt superior because of their learning. Today they
feel superior because of their ontological existence and because
they are tabernacles of certain mysteries. The mysteries are to be
found in feminism, African-American Studies, gay studies, and
matters too obscure and tedious for ordinary Americanos to
grasp.
As for a vision of the university most Americans hold,
think of a football team or a basketball team. The athletes are
uncommonly large. They attend classes but mostly they attend
practice. Some fight criminal charges for fracases they have
involved themselves. I am told that the football coach and the
basketball coach have an informal budget for criminal lawyers just
to keep the athletes out of jail. Or the athletes are fighting drug
charges or are in rehab. To be really expert, the coach of the
football team or the basketball team on most campuses has to be
versed in pharmacology and possibly in mental health. For all
intents and purposes the athletes are preparing themselves for a
tryout with a professional team. Those that fail to make the pros
disappear. Tom Wolfe drew a vivid portrait of what goes on in
college in his masterful book, I Am Charlotte
Simmons.
Yet that is only one vision of the university. The other
is ceaseless demonstrations on behalf of radical politics. Every
campus with any claim to seriousness has whole sections of the
faculty constantly on the alarm for some pressing political crisis:
the environment, world peace, and, more recently, Muslim rights.
Most faculty members do not regularly attend church, synagogue, or
yoga studios, but for some reason they are very concerned with
Muslim rights. Possibly because Muslims — at least a significant
majority of them — are very anti-Western. I believe, if the
fascists were around today and they had their wits about them, they
would be forthrightly anti-Western Civilization. That would assure
them the sympathy of the university. I can see it now, a Department
of Fascist Studies on every great university campus.
These thoughts are engendered by a very challenging omnium
gatherum of ideas about the university, Herbert London’s
Decline and Revival in Higher Education from
Transaction Publishers. London has been following the university
for three decades, from the inside. He was Dean of the Gallatin
School at New York University, “an experimental college.” He
deposits many of his reflections going back to the early 1970s in
his book. He is particularly cogent on the fate of tenure and even
more poignantly, the fate of the athletes who do not make it into
the professional ranks. They are the majority of the athletes, and
once they have failed to make the pro ranks there is nothing for
them. They are blanks. They shuffle off to obscurity, the lucky
ones to find work of a menial nature, the unfortunate to rehab or
the slammer. As I read this book I thought of the legendary
basketball coach of Indiana University, Bob Knight. He insisted his
athletes graduate. Naturally he was driven from the university by
one of the higher education’s all-time frauds, Myles
Brand.
I put the book down amazed that the athletic departments
and the politicized faculties have apparently cut a deal. They will
not inhibit each other. They have nothing in common save their
insouciance to the true mission of the university, learning. London
says that learning for the most part should involve the great books
of our civilization. He tried to make that work at New York
University and failed. He eventually left, frustrated by the
politicians on the faculty and the administration.
He has hope for a revival of the university. Yet I am
dubious. The powers arrayed against a teacher like London or
against a coach like Knight are too powerful. Knight should have
gone into the pros and forgotten his idealism, though his charges
were lucky he stayed a while. London has gone into the world of
think tanks. He is at the Hudson Institute. Now the role for him is
clear. He should make his think tank into an academy and teach the
great books. So should other think tanks. Learning is only for the
few, and the think tanks have plenty of room for growth.
