Dear colleagues
Apologies for cross postings but I thought
this from Neil Wollman would be of interest to others in Higher Education
dawn
From:
SCRA-L Div27 General Membership List [mailto:
Sent: 31 August 2005 22:03
To:
Subject: [SCRA-L] The Role of the
University in Building World Peace
News,
Views and Jobs for All of Higher Education
Wednesday
August
31, 2005
Top of Form
The Role of the University in Building World Peace
When the American Association for Higher Education shut down
this spring, many of its files went to Clara M. Lovett, its last president. She
recently found a speech given in 1948 at the annual meeting of the higher
education division of the National Education Association, which helped create
the AAHE. Lovett thought the speech — about challenges facing higher
education as the
Universities are among our oldest social institutions.
Speaking generally they have characteristically been indifferent to their
social responsibilities. They have often looked down their noses at modern
problems and modern cultural development. They have been slow to change and
slow to assume new social or educational responsibilities. Not infrequently
have they viewed questions of social policy as practical matters which lie
outside of the rightful concern of the university. The events of the last three
decades have, however, shaken the complacency of many university faculty
members and plunged a few of our leaders into a study of the ways and means
whereby the university can make its appropriate contribution to the building of
a decent and peaceful world.
There
are several major developments which have been responsible for the change in
the typical attitude of the university. Experience in
In
universities our characteristic response to a new responsibility is the
addition of a new course, a new curriculum, or at leaset some proposal for the
acquisition of new knowledge on the part of our students. We have every reason
to doubt the wisdom of our past responses in such situations. It is going to
take something more than knowledge of new facts to brings about a peaceful world.
New courses can teach new facts, but they do not necessarily give our students
and graduates the will to build a peaceful world or the social effectiveness
for bringing such a world into being.
The
plain fact is, we do not as a people understand the problem of world peace. We
do not have a sufficient determination to build a peaceful world. We do not
sense our own individual and collective responsibilities in relation to world
peace. As a people we lack the consecration to human values and the devotion to
human brotherhood that must of necessity be a foundation for a peaceful world.
Perhaps most important of all we fail to realize that it is the success of free
institutions inside our own country and other countries that is the primary
requisite for the success of any international organization any effort at the
maintenance of an enduring peace. If we are interested in examining the role of
the university in building world peace, we should examine the course which has
been followed by our own country in both the international and domestic scene
since V-J Day. Through such an examination we can discover our major errors and
identify the elements of unsoundness in our domestic and world leadership. From
a study of these errors we can, I believe, map a sound emphasis for the
university as it seeks to make a contribution to enduring world peace.
We
have seen our country disappoint liberty-loving peoples the world over. Our
international role has been characterized by confusion, uncertainty,
vacillation, and, on occasion, downright dishonesty. While we have faltered in
the international scene, we have stumbled about ineffectively at home. As of
the present moment there is more fear in the heart of the average American than
there has been at any time in the history of our country. This fear is not
easily explained. It is an oversimplification to say that we are afraid of
We
have, it seems to me, made four major errors in charting the domestic and
international course of our country and the entire democratic world. If the
university is to play its proper role in the building of world peace, it must
give its students a type of experience and equipment which will help us as a
nation and as a world to correct these errors and chart a sound course in the
direction of world peace.
In the first place, we in the Western world in general and in
Similarly,
I am not only fearful of losing our freedom through a war, through a fascist or
communist coup, but I am equally fearful of losing it through the adoption on
our part of the police-state methods of the totalitarian world. I am
accordingly extremely skeptical that the present much talked-of efforts to
ferret out the Communists can actually be carried through without the loss of
freedom for us all. And if through panic and fear of communism we lose our
freedom, we have lost it just as truly as if it had been taken away from us by
a foreign power.
Tragic
as it may be, even our university graduates do not understand the meaning of
our freedoms; nor do they realize the ways and means whereby these freedoms can
be preserved. Therefore, teaching the meaning of human freedom is the first
responsibility of the university in building world peace. We should, however,
hasten to add that no perfunctory subject matter approach to the problem of
freedom will be effective. For years our college students have studied our
history. They have read our Constitution. They have read the Declaration of
Independence and other documents, but these and other materials have become
stereotypes. They have been viewed in terms of political freedom alone. No
organized and concerted attempt has been made to develop democratic principles
in the area of economics, or of human relations, or in the field of the fine
arts. As a result, a large proportion of our college graduates see no conflict
between our great historic documents of freedom and segregation of whites and
Negroes, poor housing, periodic unemployment, and lack of educational
opportunities. Had our colleges and universities properly taught the meaning of
human freedom, we would have had federal aid to education decades ago in this
country. Had all the educational institutions in our nation really believed in
our freedoms and taught them effectively, our country would today be vastly
more democratic than it is.
But as a nation we have made a second tragic error since V-J
Day. Somehow we have assumed that the problem of world peace can be solved
through a world organization such as the United Nations, regardless of the
success of our free institutions at home....
Our failure to see the relationship between the problems of our domestic
society and the difficulties of our world leadership grows out of our tendency
to compartmentalize world problems, to blame our difficulties on other
countries and on the weaknesses of governmental machinery and other forms of
democratic implementation. We blame the machinery and we blame other countries
when it is our own lack of moral conviction and sense of duty and
responsibility that is to blame.
Clearly
in this area the university has a large responsibility. It is not, however,
enough for colleges and universities to convince the students of the
inter-relatedness of our national and international problems. Something far
deeper and more vital is demanded. The plain fact is, the whole Western
democratic world has suffered a moral relapse in recent decades. The church has
lost its hold on millions of our people. No substitute moral influence has come
into our life. Opportunism, gross selfishness, and unbridled greed have had
their unexampled innings. Irresponsible self-seeking has not only invaded
business and labor but has made deep inroads into the profession of education
itself. If freedom is to be saved and if world peace is to be achieved, the
university must meet its responsibility in the realm of ethical and moral
education.
In
state-supported institutions, we cannot use the fact of legal restrictions on
religious education as an alibi for failing to teach ethical and moral standards
to our young people. Our own heritage of democracy is rich in ethical and moral
content. Our literature presents enormous opportunities that can be exploited
in many directions. The fine arts have a great potential contribution, and
— most important of all — human relationships of the college and
university campus can make an outstanding contribution if only we appreciate
their importance and plan their programs and activities intelligently.
The third misconception which has undermined many of our
domestic and international post-war policies has been the assumption that good
can be accomplished through the doing of evil. We
seem to think freedom can be saved for ourselves through a sacrifice of freedom
for minorities and small nations and that we can further freedom for our own
country by playing fast and loose with the welfare of small and less powerful
countries and groups. Looking back over the period since V-J Day it seems
almost impossible to understand how we can as a nation have been led into so
many embarrassing and ambiguous positions. The most charitable way we can
account for our blunders is to assume that we simply did not understand the
processes whereby human freedom can be saved. There is in this connection a
very simple principle. Freedom will not live unless it works. If it does not
work, no amount of defense of freedom through persecution of its opponents, through
spending money for relief, through propaganda, or through military efforts will
avail....
If
our universities are to play their appropriate role in the building of world
peace, they must be the instrumentalities for making human freedom a working reality.
As long as there are despotic, dictatorial police-state governments in the
world there will be threats to peace. As long as there are social injustice,
lack of educational opportunity, racial subordination, and discrimination,
there will be threats to world peace. The problem of world peace has a unity
and integrity which we in the academic world have failed to sense. We cannot
preserve freedom for ourselves without doing all we can at all times to extend
freedom to others. We cannot achieve prosperity for ourselves unless we do all
we can to contribute to the prosperity of others. We cannot hope to enjoy
uninterrupted liberty at home without honestly seeking liberty for the human
spirit in all parts of the world, and we shall never sense this inter-relatedness
until we come to understand the true foundation of our free institutions.
Freedom
is not a mere accidental human aspiration. It is not only a philosophical
conception; it is not only a theory or a hypothesis. On the contrary, free
institutions are deeply rooted in the findings of those sciences which throw
light on the nature of the human organism and on human behavior. Biology
teaches us that all human individuals are different. Each person is unique, and
it is out of this uniqueness that all creative power comes. We need a free
society, therefore, in an effort to release the greatest creative powers of all
individuals and through this release to enhance the achievements of society as
a whole. We learn that personal and emotional security is essential to the
greatest personal and intellectual growth. Thus respect for personality and for
the worth and dignity of the individual has a sound foundation in the findings
of science. It is essential that a university education should establish this
scientific foundation for human freedom in the mind and heart of the student.
With such understandings our citizens will be less vulnerable to propaganda,
more effective in the defense of their heritage, and more zealous in the
efforts to preserve it.
Our fourth serious error grows out of our tendency to feel
that we have achieved the fruits of freedom merely through talking about it. Fourth of July speeches, political convention oratory, and speeches of
educational philosophers are examples. We have in fact become so skillful in
mouthing the beautiful phrases of our democratic heritage that the mere sound
of the words themselves seems somehow to have brought a democratic society into
being. In our saner moments we know that nothing is further from the truth, and
here we, in the university, must hang our heads in shame. With all our talk
about teaching the principles of human freedom and democracy we must openly
confess that our universities are not democratic in organization, in
administration, or in the conduct of their educational activities or campus
affairs.
My
own experience in university life is now of sufficient length and in a
sufficient number of different institutions that I feel I have some
experiential basis for the observations I am about to make. It is my honest conviction that the universities of
this country will not become major factors in teaching human freedom and
democratic ideals until they begin seriously to practice these ideals in their
own organization and administration. Let us, however, be more
specific in treating this issue. I refer to such specific and mundane things as
the determination of faculty salaries. It is my observation that no single item
of expenditure in a university is as difficult to increase as the salary of a
professor. One can get money for new buildings, for new equipment, for
research, for public relations, yes, for almost anything you can think of
before one can get money for improved salaries. I have never read any religious
or ethical document which held that increasing a professor’s salary is a
sin, but when I observe the attitude of university administrators toward salary
increases I am almost led to the conclusion that they must view such increases
as a dreadful sin. If we really believed in educational democracy, we would see
to it that every possible dollar is spent on good faculty salaries in order to
bring the finest teaching talent to our students and put our staff members in
position to render the very finest and most creative service. My experience is
that we operate on almost the direct opposite of this policy.
But
it is not only in matters of salary that we are undemocratic. I have now seen
successive generations of young men enter academic life with great enthusiasms,
high hopes for the future, and commendable consecration to the welfare of their
students. I have observed them five or ten years later only to see that they
have become cynical, discouraged, embittered, and resigned to the doing of a
routine job, the drawing of meager salaries, and the achievement of a tenuous
security. It is the most distressing and painful observation of my entire
academic experience. Primarily, it grows out of the way in which a university
organization functions to restrict the individual in the exercise and
development of his creative talent. Here it is not only the presidents and
deans who are in error. Department chairmen, full professors, and perhaps even
an occasional instructor are at fault.
Excessive
regimentation on the part of administrators, on the part of faculty committees,
and through faculty regulations plays its part. Here we are, of course,
primarily concerned with the impact of the university on the problem of saving
our freedom, preserving our democratic heritage, and building a peaceful world.
Certainly we shall not achieve these far-flung and difficult objectives through
a program of mealy-mouthed utterances concerning the glories of freedom. If we
are really serious about teaching these human values, we must see to it that
the institutions in which we teach are themselves fine examples of the
democratic principles and concepts of freedom we are seeking to teach. As
things are, much of what goes on in a university does not teach the student the
meaning and glory of freedom, but gives him a cynical notion that freedom is
something you talk about but probably never will enjoy.
Clearly
we shall not give our college students the understandings of the problems of
world peace through a few specialized courses in the social sciences, or
through occasional lectures, or through any single pedagogical or curricular
device. The meaning of human freedom, the devotion to human values, the
understanding of human brotherhood, and the required social effectiveness for
the practice of all of these are all too involved, too subtle, too difficult to
come by, for any such lick-and-promise treatment. If universities are to be
successful in their efforts to preserve human freedom, they must themselves
believe in our free institutions. They cannot teach without a great faith.
It
is the building of this great faith that is the major task of higher education.
The progress made in human freedom to date has been made by those leaders who
possess a great faith in the common man and in the processes of a free society.
But the problem of building a great faith is not essentially or primarily a
verbal undertaking. As human beings we believe in those principles and
institutions which, over a period of time, serve mankind by bringing widespread
human well-being. If we want our people to believe in democracy, we must make
it a working democracy which delivers well-being to the masses of our people.
We
tend also to maintain our faith in those principles and processes to which we
can ourselves make a contribution. It is hard for an individual to continue to
believe in a process that is for him remote, external, and detached. The
individual citizen will keep his faith in those processes in which he can
participate and to which he can contribute. We must find more ways whereby the
average citizen can participate in the affairs of the community. In our
universities we must discover more ways in which students can share in the
improvement of university life. We must give our students an opportunity to
experience the benefits of democracy in the source of their college education.
If
freedom is to live, the world needs an honest and forthright
The
late Ernest O. Melby was dean of the