5 - Ideas of the University

Summary

This chapter begins with examples of experiments of building new universities or investing significant new resources in old universities in India and China to make the point that there seems to be more dynamism in the higher education sector these days in Asia than in America. The chapter moves from this to considering some of the core ideas of the university – to borrow the title of Cardinal Newman’s famous nineteenth-century book The Idea of the University – focusing on the ideas behind the liberal arts. I look at the relationship of the liberal arts to the humanities and consider some of the debates over both curricular requirements and canons as well as more broadly the way the humanities have often been narrowly identified with western civilization and specifically with departments of European language and literature (with a little history, philosophy, and classics thrown in). I consider the tensions and divides between the “arts” and the “sciences” as well as the residual investments of religious belief and values in many understandings and depictions of the liberal arts. I use this to consider issues related to free speech and open inquiry more broadly, as well as the residual tensions between teaching and research.