The Needs of the World vs. the University

Transcription

1. Conflict between the needs of the world at large, and the needs of the specific society containing the university.
2. This has been represented by a conflict within the university, between the training of people to take their place, and the promulgation of ideals which suggest that places should be changed.
3. The conflict is more serious than ever before in history because the threat to the world by inter-nation rivalry is overwhelming, and because there are far more students in universities than ever before.
4. This means that the pressures on universities are greater, and the opportunities are greater.
5. I want to be simple, and I want to be specific. The most urgent world need is for peace, for which a prerequisite is to diminish national hostility. Let me be specific about the United States and its universities.
6. The United States is a good example of the global problem, it is also the most intense theatre of this conflict, because here we have the largest university population in the world, and because the United States is one of the greatest threats to world peace — the Soviet Union is another. These are the two nuclear giants, and neither government is trustworthy as we can tell from their past behavior. And both governments are prone to distortion, falsification and varying degrees of paranoia. When you add those ingredients to the possession of enough H-bombs to destroy the world, we have a great job on our hands, to defuse both the bombs and the impulse to use them. We in the universities can’t lay our hands on the bombs, but we may be able to do something about the impulse.
7. This will require a very important move, severing our psychological attachment to our government, as well as organizational attachments which students have been campaigning against so vigorously this past year. The result of such psychological withdrawal from national loyalty may be even more severe conflict than has sprung from the other kinds.
8. Traditionally, the university community & the American government enjoyed quiet friendly relations. Mainly, because we knew our place.
9. This is no longer so. The traditional knowledge is being challenged.
10. Knowledge as a form of power, particularly in moder[n society] where governments use deception as well as force.
11. The power can be directly purchased by government for it[s] use.
12. Or it can be deflected, neutralized. This is the more important of the two.
13. Neutrality is internalized by a set of values dominating the university, which we would need to take apart: “disinterested scholarship”, the “scientific” approach, rationality instead of emotion.
14. Discarding these, we would have to use our power on behalf of certain values — and primarily, the breaking down of national hatred, the tolerance of war.
15. This means dealing with the use of symbolism to justify violence in international affairs:
    • the enemy
    • Communism (imperialism)
16. It means not being content with tokens while wars are being prepared over our heads:
    • giving us play-room in the universities
    • setting up nice inter-cultural delegations to make us feel something important is being done.
17. Specifically: curriculum, faculty, students — curriculum based on values, problems — not professional traditions — separate disciplines. Begin to create a new generation that refuses to fight wars, that uses its knowledge to break down old myths, to develop tactics for social change.
18. This is risky, but it may be our only hope.