RE-IMAGINING THE UNIVERSITY

    The thesis of this essay is that the contemporary crisis of the university presents a unique challenge and opportunity to rethink the very idea of a university as a quest for truth, discovery, interdisciplinary intellectual engagement, and vocation understood as character development and preparation for life, career, and participatory citizenship in a democracy. There is considerable skepticism shared by students, parents, legislators, and the public regarding the relevance, value, and cost of higher education. Students are concerned about the marketability of their degrees. Parents fret over their children’s future prospects and success in life. Legislators question the financial accountability, transparency, and cost-effectiveness of higher education. But the major concern is the public’s potential disenchantment with a system of education which fails to deliver on its promises. As Mark William Roche laments, “in an environment where the value of a liberal arts education is no longer taken for granted, only a minority of undergraduate degrees are awarded in the liberal arts” (2010: 2).

    Science, technology, trade, and communications now drive all aspects of life in the global village, including higher education. There is increasing recognition of a crisis in the very conception of the role of a university. Should a university focus on training technical specialists for a high-tech global economy or emphasize a broad liberal arts curriculum? Critics point to the fragmentation of knowledge, the lack of a unifying center, and the fast pace of scientific and technological change which requires continuous upgrade of skills, leaving no room for the integration of knowledge or the education of the whole person. Yet, globalization presupposes a better knowledge of different cultures, socio-economic and political systems, and an understanding of the motivations, nature, and purposes of human beings.

    The classical Greek paideia encompassed the education of body, mind, and soul, reflected in John Henry Newman’s iconic The Idea of a University (1852). The question arises: Can Newman’s ideal of the integration of all disciplines into a “wholeness of vision” and a “true enlargement of the mind” inspire the rediscovery of the proper role of a university of educating the whole person? Should a university foster greater intellectual diversity, cultural discernment, and character education for self-fulfillment and a more felicitous social life by renewing the dialogue between Athens (Enlightenment reason) and Jerusalem (religious faith)?

    A consensus may be emerging regarding the strengths and weaknesses of American higher education, and possible remedies. Perhaps one should begin with the observation that American higher education remains the envy of the world and an ideal which continues to inspire. Unlike other times and places, America may be said to have “invented” higher education or, rather, made it accessible to the masses in pursuing the vision of universal higher education–a notable democratic ideal. The successes of American higher education over the last half-century are admirable in educating millions of youth and adults, and extending the American Promise to hitherto disadvantaged groups. Even critics of “affirmative action” have to admit the successes, while qualified, extending higher education opportunities to various minorities, though the means have proven divisive, excluding disadvantaged groups that do not fit the racial/ethnic/gender profiling, such as poor white youths from impoverished areas like the Appalachia or the deep South. In brief, more, rather than less, diversity is called for based on non-discriminatory criteria to reflect the American Promise of equality of opportunity without regard to race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, philosophical, political or religious persuasion. This would, indeed, move us closer to realizing Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of an America where people would be judged by the strength of their character rather than the color of their skin.

    The successes of American higher education are due in no small measure to the great diversity of some 3,500 higher education institutions–large and small, private and public, secular and religious, undergraduate and graduate. Yet, the cost of higher education has escalated while a college degree no longer guarantees a favored career or occupation, engendering renewed soul-searching regarding the meaning, relevance, and value of university education. Higher education institutions have come under more intense scrutiny by various stake-holders questioning in effect whether universities really deserve public support, and especially public funding, in an era of limits. Occasional scandals and misuse of funds by individuals or institutions, though on a smaller scale than global corporate mismanagement, have further undermined public confidence in educational institutions at all levels of education, for-profit or non-profit. Universities have endeavored to counter such perceptions by streamlining operations, often sacrificing entire departments and programs, laying off faculty and staff, drawing on part-timers and delaying maintenance, increasing tuition, greater administrative stringencies and oversight, while trying to meet demands for greater transparency, accountability, and responsiveness to market forces. Small, underfunded colleges are even forced to close, though a better solution is to become branch campuses of stronger institutions.

    In view of such challenges, can the university re-invent itself to fulfill the high expectations in the twenty-first century regarding teaching, research, and service as a repository of knowledge conveying humanity’s intellectual heritage, providing opportunities for new discoveries, and facilitating social mobility? Educators like Roche recall the university’s major strength and traditional role of providing “a broad grounding in the diverse disciplines,” or the classical liberal arts, as the best preparation for life, career, and citizenship (2010: 5). Yet others, like William Tierney, point out the need for “long-overdue academic and intellectual reforms” (2011: A64). In Tierney’s view: “The curriculum-as-undergraduate-buffet should be replaced with a pared-down list of the intellect and the acquisition of skills needed in the 21st century” (2011: A64). Tierney notes the lack of student-faculty interactions in and outside class, along with low expectations for both students and faculty, reflected in student boredom and faculty apathy. Tierney calls for “dramatic change” to recover excellence, while aware that the faculty tends to “defend a bloated, academically incoherent curriculum” (2011: A64).

    This state of affairs inspired Harvard University to reinvent a core curriculum in 2007–its biggest curriculum overhaul in 30 years–which introduced eight new required subject areas, including societies of the world, culture and belief, study of ethical issues, empirical reasoning, science of living systems and of the physical universe, and aesthetic and interpretive understanding. There are also calls to recognize and value the scholarship of teaching, rather than just research and publication. Clayton Christensen and Henry Eyring confirm Tierney’s analysis and recommendation that programmatic offerings “need to be more focused,” with some majors dropped, others shortened, while “the number of departments and centers at most institutions need strategic shrinking” (2011: A72).

    Yet, what the academy may need is re-structuring rather than “strategic shrinking.” Given the great diversity of higher education institutions in the United States, a pluralism of approaches may provide the needed flexibility to achieve the sought after goals of revitalizing teaching, research, and service, and improving quality while assuring solvency. One such model, which offers a regional solution to the multilayered dilemmas of access, availability of resources, work-force training, adult education, career advancement, and even economic development, is the Florida community colleges experiment. With 14 million unemployed in America, and a world-wide recession, higher education institutions could well become an engine of economic growth. Despite millions of unemployed, tens of thousands of jobs remain unfilled due to the lack of trained personnel. While some may object to community colleges offering bachelor’s degrees, Florida community colleges have a proven track record of providing educational and career advancement opportunities to an adult population as its only viable option. According to Ryan West, of the Florida Chamber of Commerce, allowing community colleges to award job-specific bachelor’s degrees is “an innovative approach to the state’s work-force needs” (Gonzalez 2010: A12).

    Purists might object to such innovative programs as “vocational,” but the fact remains that all participants benefit, including individual students, colleges, faculty, the state, and the economy. Granted that vocational or technical institutes may provide equivalent training in technical aspects of various high-tech careers and vocations. But, such institutes cannot grant bachelor’s degrees, nor, more importantly, offer comprehensive higher education encompassing the liberal arts in which colleges excel. The challenge for colleges that wish to provide job-specific career training for youth and adults is to complement vocational or career education courses with a strong core curriculum in the liberal arts. Colleges owe it to their students to offer career-oriented programs which will lead to real jobs. More comprehensive data collection regarding regional, state, and national job openings and job trends is needed, along with more comprehensive student counseling regarding such opportunities. Both the public and private sectors may want to offer job-specific scholarships and internships, while the choice of occupation should remain the student’s prerogative. Such innovative programs would help reduce unemployment, encourage more youth and adults to consider a college-level education, and re-invigorate colleges and universities with a renewed sense of mission and accomplishment, and earn the respect due to educators’ high calling.

                                                      THE PROMISE OF THE LIBERAL ARTS

    John Henry Newman championed the idea of a university focusing on the liberal arts as an introduction to the great circle of knowledge essential for a “true enlargement of the mind,” conducive to a “wholeness of vision” and the education of the whole person. Newman was an early proponent of the growing realization in the twenty-first century regarding the interconnectedness of all disciplines and the unity of knowledge comprising the very idea of a university. Yet Newman’s ideal of the university was rooted in the classic notion emphasizing the essential role of theology in providing standards of judgment for the integration of individual disciplines into a larger whole. Once upon a time, the awe and wonder of religion provided an assumed center to education–a belief in truth and ultimate meaning. Hence, Newman saw the crisis of liberal education as directly related to the loss of theology, and cautioned against the usurpation of theology’s role by other disciplines (Hittinger 1999).

    In our time, Pope John Paul II’s encyclical, Ex corde ecclesiae (1990), on the teaching mission of the Church, offered a restatement of Newman’s vision of educating the whole person. John Paul called for a search for the integration of knowledge, dialogue between faith and reason, an emphasis on ethics and the dignity of the person, and a theological perspective for achieving these goals (1990: 7, 15-20). Alas, in a secular era, both truth and theology have fallen upon hard times. Stratford Caldecott notes that: “In the modern world, thanks to the rise of modern science and the decline of religious cosmology, the arts and sciences have been separated and divorced. Faith and reason often appear to be opposed, and we have lost any clear sense of who we are and where we are going” (2009: 11). This leads C. John Sommerville to conclude that the prevailing model of the secular university is “increasingly marginal to American society,” and that this is “a result of its secularism” (2006: 4). This is so, according to Sommerville, because “questions that might be central to the university’s mission are too religious for it to deal with” (2006: 4).

    Sommerville contends that professional programs reflect “some idea of human optimality, involving ethical imperatives that the university shies away from because they raise the specter of religion” (2006: 4). Sommerville also questions the reticence on the part of educators to require the study of Western Civilization in favor of new intellectual fashions where the humanities no longer offer an appreciation of culture, but only “criticism of culture” (2006: 4, 9). Such new intellectual fashions can lead to forgetfulness and an inability to entertain reasoned arguments or discern cultural differences. Sommerville asks: “Should multiculturalism trump an understanding of the forces, including religious forces, that have shaped us, so that we don’t understand ourselves?” (2006: 5).

    Even non-believing academics sense the spiritual crisis of the university, which no longer seems to engage the perennial questions of life’s meaning and purpose. Thus, Anthony T. Kronman bemoans the corrosive ideas of political correctness, diversity, multiculturalism, and the “belief that values are merely expressions of power,” since they discourage the exploration of ”the question of life’s purpose and meaning” (2007: 7). Kronman is skeptical of the university’s research ideal, since it “devalues the question of what living is for” (2007: 90). The other culprit, for Kronman, is science, which permeates our civilization “with its vast powers of control,” but which cannot fill the spiritual void or provide answers concerning life’s meaning and value (2007: 229).

    Unlike Newman, John Paul II or Sommerville, Kronman offers not a spiritual, religious or theological remedy, but rather a “reaffirmation of secular humanism” (2007: 229). To Kronman, “the spiritual emptiness of our civilization has its source in the technology whose achievements we celebrate and on whose power we all now depend” (2007: 229). Hence, Kronman argues for a revitalization of the humanities invoking secular humanism and secular morality, which only begs the question of the normative bases of any morality which claims to be more than mere subjectivity dubbed the social construction of reality (Gruenwald 1992). Kronman complains that vital questions concerning human life and meaning are now being asked only by the religious whom he disdains as “fundamentalists.” As Kronman avers, the wider culture has been deprived of “a strong and independent center where such instruction might be sought, and been left with no alternative to religious fundamentalism” (207: 203). The remedy for this state of affairs, per Kronman, is to restore the humanities by recovering the tradition of secular humanism and secular morality. Kronman holds science and technology responsible for the “spiritual emptiness of our civilization,” but reserves special ire for those who oppose secular morality–the religious and those who merely feign religiosity:

"To this morality, the fundamentalist Protestant churches in America, the jihadist wing of Islam, and the Pope all oppose a morality of humility and submission, of acquiescence in our lack of control and grateful acceptance of the power of God, on which we depend and must never foolishly arrogate to ourselves" (2007: 235).

    One does not have to be a religious believer to question Kronman’s analysis which, although well-intentioned, casts doubt on the adequacy of secular humanist ideology to come to grips with the cultural and educational crisis of an era which has forgotten God, and therefore also tends to be dismissive of what is truly human (Gruenwald 2002). Thus, George Marsden’s critique of contemporary university culture focuses on the lack of a spiritual center or even “any real alternative” (1997: 3). Marsden notes that academics tend to be “dogmatic moralists,” yet “many also espouse theories that would undermine not only traditional moral norms, but their own as well. Others, probably most academics, do not even try to deal with first principles” (1997: 3). Marsden wonders also about “a puzzling phenomenon that, among so many academics who are professing Christians, all but a tiny minority keep quiet about the intellectual implications of their faith” (1997: 6).

    Curiously, Kronman’s critique of science and technology is reminiscent of the counter-cultural ethos of the 1960s, which indicted science, technology, the military-industrial complex, the commercialization of life, and hot and cold wars as root causes of human alienation due to their narrow, questionable rationality. The counter-culture’s response became the quest for authenticity, subjectivity, and self-forgetfulness (nirvana). It was an understandable rebellion of a generation coming of age in a century that witnessed two world wars, untold human suffering, and the invention of doomsday weapons, which, if anything, bespoke of humanity’s lack of control over its destiny. Still, the “flower children” were beholden to a flawed perception of science and technique as the new Frankenstein or exploitative tools of post-industrial capitalist society. Likewise, Kronman sees our modern dependence on science and technology as instrumental in creating a spiritual vacuum. Yet science and technology are not self-generating; they are human creations, though they tend to develop dynamics of their own once set in motion.

    In brief, the contemporary spiritual crisis reaches much deeper to its human and ultimately religious roots, which a secular academic culture is unwilling to admit. At issue, then, is what Marsden and Stephen Carter (1993) diagnose as the “trivialization” of religion, especially a persistent bias against Christian perspectives, whether in academe, the news and entertainment media, or the courts. This leads Marsden to conclude that: “In effect, in place of a Protestant establishment we now have a virtual establishment of nonbelief” (1997: 23).

                                                SCIENCE-ETHICS-RELIGION DIALOGUE

    In fairness, Kronman does point to an important cultural dynamic: the triumph of science and technology in the twentieth century. Indeed, science and technology unleashed unprecedented new powers for manipulating Nature. Science and technology thus appeared to complete the Enlightenment project of enthroning Reason as humanity’s guiding light, displacing the earlier religious metaphysics. Yet, the triumph of science and technology flattened humanity’s moral and spiritual cosmological horizon. Science’s empirical methodology proved fruitful in decoding secrets of the material universe, but its positivist “scientific method” bracketed all values as personal, subjective, “unscientific,” if not irrelevant. Alas, by bracketing all values, science also bracketed the human subject. Science’s instrumental rationality and the commercial market’s utilitarian cash-nexus have proved inadequate to address the human condition and the vast web of interpersonal relationships–social, psychological, and spiritual.

    This has led to an existential crisis of being and of understanding due to a bifurcation of knowledge and faith, fact and value, science and religion. Unlike Kronman, Elaine Howard Ecklund tries to open lines of communication between the communities of science and faith (2011: B9-10). Ecklund deploys a shrewd approach that argues for the need for scientists to become better acquainted with religion, ethics, and values in order to be able to communicate better with students, and also to make science more acceptable to a skeptical public. However, such a proposal faces a two-fold dilemma:

    (1) In what some call a post-Christian era in the West, religious faith has waned, and academics in general, and scientists in particular, think it backward, illogical, illegitimate, reactionary, and “unscientific” to bring up religion or morals for discussion. The popular culture seems to counter appeals to either morality or religion with the commercialized mantra: “If it feels good, do it.” The postmodern aversion to absolutes or any fixed moral-ethical standards for judging individual behavior or social action begs the question of how, then, can one discern what is just and good, or condemn such evils as the Nazi-caused Holocaust, the Soviet Gulag, or the Chinese laogai? (Gruenwald 2000). Yet, admitting that one takes religion or ethics seriously immediately casts doubt in academic quarters regarding one’s objectivity, fair-mindedness, political correctness, and scholarly credentials, if not one’s sanity.

    (2) The second major barrier for scientists taking religion, values, or ethics seriously is embedded deeply in academic culture regarding the compartmentalization of knowledge into disciplines, fields, and subfields. There is a giant gulf separating the natural sciences from the social sciences and humanities. The natural sciences claim objective, factual knowledge of the world via the allegedly value-free “scientific method.” The social sciences have tried to emulate the natural sciences’ empiricism, with mixed success. The humanities have been confined to the realm of personal opinion, some would say irrelevance, reflected in various schools of thought in philosophy and a great diversity of ethical, aesthetic, and religious persuasions seen as merely subjective. This led C. P. Snow to lament the division between scientists and humanists in The Two Cultures (2003).

    What Ecklund and Kronman, among others, overlook are efforts at bridge-building across all disciplines, reconnecting knowledge, ethics and faith, aspiring to integrate scientific facts, values, ethics, and religious worldviews in the quest for a more holistic understanding of the promise and challenge of being human. One such educational endeavor is the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research, the International Christian Studies Association, and their co-sponsored Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies: An International Journal of Interdisciplinary and Interfaith Dialogue, a refereed trilingual thematic annual, and a unique resource for student and faculty mentoring. Thus, skeptics would be encouraged to learn about the prospects for redeeming the academe’s future via a Third Culture, a culture of cultures, re-envisioning all disciplines, theory and practice (Gruenwald 2005). Skeptics on both sides of the evolution-creation controversy, which undermines both science education and faith commitments, would be even more surprised at the possibility of a conceptual-theoretical breakthrough bridging Darwinism and Intelligent Design, a new paradigm in Thomas Kuhn’s (1973) sense–a Copernican revolution in evolution (Gruenwald 2010).

    In brief, there is hope that academic culture may yet come to address student needs for relevance, meaning, ethical engagement, and the spiritual quest, as well as the widespread public distrust of science. The obstacles for transforming academic culture are formidable. Kronman is right that the American university is modeled on the research ideal. More daunting is the fact, noted by Louis Menand, that the American university is a “product of the nineteenth century,” and that it has changed little structurally “since the time of the First World War” (2010: 17). Menand is painfully aware that the university’s research ideal, which requires narrow specialization, runs counter to the expectation that faculty teaching should help students connect the insights of various disciplines and specializations in order to make the college experience relevant to real life. Menand proposes that faculty should be trained “differently,” but dismisses interdisciplinarity as a “buzzword” and expression of academic Angst, or a he puts it “an administrative name for an anxiety and a hope that are personal” (2010: 125, 158).

    Menand concludes that the present academic system is “a deeply internalized one,” resistant to change (2010: 157). Of greater concern is Menand’s observation that the academic system tends to conformism in that: “Professors tend increasingly to think alike because the profession is increasingly self-selected. The university may not explicitly require conformity on more than scholarly matters, but the existing system implicitly demands and constructs it” (2010: 155). If Menand’s observation is true, then, what the contemporary university needs most is intellectual diversity. Menand admits that the university professoriate is out of step with American public opinion and, while faculty should not be a copycat or mirror the public, “a greater diversity of views within the professoriate is a worthy goal” (2010: 155). Yet, given what Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter identify as the “vanishing conservative” from the faculties of American universities (in Maranto 2009: 60), such a goal appears but a distant ideal. Despite the prevalence of “group-think” in academia, Daniel Klein and Charlotta Stern are more optimistic that reality will trump ideology:

"Our hunch about the future is that the social democratic dominance within the humanities and social sciences will grow increasingly insipid. Over time, it will become less hostile to classical liberal and conservative ideas, and such scholars of a mild, strategic kind will have greater success in permeating these fields. Enlightenment has its own power and rewards, and, nowadays, even scholarly discourse is much too contestable to succeed in keeping classical liberalism down" (2009: 96).

    Klein and Stern may be right regarding future prospects for the academy. In the meantime, independent thought seems confined mainly to reservations for thought and action. Conservative thought still flourishes in such think-tanks as the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Cato Institute, Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy, Ethics and Public Policy Center, Heritage Foundation, Hoover Institution, Hudson Institute, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and Manhattan Institute. Yet the challenge remains for mainstream institutions of higher learning to encourage true intellectual diversity beyond left and right, liberal and conservative.

                                                       THE POSTMODERN TEMPTATION

    If there is to be a true reform in the academy, making it more relevant to its central mission of teaching, research, and service in the twenty-first century, then there is a great need for revitalizing academic culture as free inquiry. As critics surmise, student boredom and faculty apathy are due to the fact that the university no longer addresses perennial issues, first principles, great questions of good and evil, ethical imperatives or religious inspiration, which imbue life with meaning, value, and purpose. More than an “establishment of nonbelief” is at play. Rather, what needs interrogating is the postmodern temper, which envelops the university with largely unexamined cultural assumptions, what one might call the postmodern temptation.

 That the university needs such ideals as tolerance, civility of discourse, openness to new ideas, appreciation of other cultures, concern for the underprivileged, and freedom to critique existing socio-economic and political systems, institutions and processes, is beyond question. In fact, a healthy dose of pragmatism and even skepticism is desirable for realistic assessment of both secular and religious utopianism and fanaticism epitomized by the Marxist project of a classless society, which leads to the Gulag (Gruenwald 1983), and Islam’s inversion into terrorist jihad, impugning all religious believers as “fundamentalists.” As Sommerville counsels, “imagine universities that are incidentally secular in the sense that religion doesn’t rule, but not officially secularist in the sense that religion is ruled out: universities whose goal is not to impose a privileged viewpoint but to understand all viewpoints that are able to win a hearing” (2006: 143).

    At present, Christian and other viewpoints based on a religious conception of the self and the world are increasingly suspect in academe. Worse, educators who espouse religious viewpoints, especially Christianity, find to their amazement that even the courts no longer protect their first amendment rights of free speech or conscience. Curiously, the reigning ideal of tolerance excludes not only religious viewpoints, but all explicitly normative approaches which dare to invoke universal standards of ethics or absolutes that transcend the social construction of reality as mere subjectivity. Welcome to po-mo.

    It is a great irony that the prevailing postmodern ethos of the contemporary university, which emphasizes tolerance and a non-judgmental stance, is intolerant of all normative approaches to reality. This reflects postmodernity’s basic premise that there are no ascertainable truths, universals or absolutes, that all standards are socially constructed, and that truth is but a function of the particular configuration of power in a society. In this postmodern ethos, the Self has become the ultimate arbiter of morality. Such radical subjectivism is the epitome of moral-ethical relativism. As William Gairdner comments: “Ironically, relativism has become our only absolute” (2009: x). But, if everything is relative, if there are no standards for truth, beauty, ethical conduct, meaning, and value, what, then, is the purpose of a university education? If there is no ascertainable truth to anything in this world, beyond human subjectivity and the shifting sands of socio-cultural whims, of what use is a university?

    If the university is to become relevant once more to real life by encouraging human striving for excellence, self-knowledge, and discovery, it will need to re-dedicate itself to exploring first principles, normative standards for discerning good and evil, the permanent things and truths about Nature and human nature. An appreciation of the normative standards or an Archimedes point for truths, absolutes, and universals would help also rebuild both broken selves and up-ended communities. Gairdner cautions that “it is plainly impossible for human beings to form a community of any kind whatsoever when all their judgments are relative. For taken to the natural conclusion, the relativist position on any subject will always result in a collision of private viewpoints and in human disconnection” (2009: xii). Relativism is not only corrosive of social relations, but undermines the very purposes of a university education: to learn the truth about ourselves and the world. Gairdner argues convincingly that relativism is self-refuting, logically incoherent, anti-liberal, that it undermines freedom and democracy, and even requires absolutes (2009: 31-43). More to the point, Gairdner’s study offers a catalogue of universals in nature, human life, and culture, which stand in stark contrast to po-mo’s denial of absolutes and universals in favor of “difference.” Gairdner shows that the universals of law–natural law and moral law–are common to all cultures, times and places, and offers an insight which ought to guide a true university educating the whole person:

"All humans must cultivate a higher self (guided by the compass of natural law) that seeks the common good and is based in right reason in order to control or guide their own wayward or unnatural passions and unjust urges" (2009: 193).

    This recalls the classical Greek paideia of educating body, mind, and soul (Gruenwald 1999). It reveals also the fundamental flaw in the postmodern ethos: a one-dimensional, reductionist conception of human nature, which extols the id (instinctual drives) and ego (self-centeredness or narcissism), and bars the superego (conscience). Po-mo’s skewed conception of human nature thus precludes the right ordering of the soul, where the appetites and the spirited element should be subordinate to the intellect or reason. Christianity ennobled the classic conception of human nature by connecting its aspirations to a vertical dimension of transcendence (Gruenwald 2007). This is why Caldecott can conclude that “the Christian conception of freedom is larger and fuller than the modern conception, for it includes both vertical and horizontal dimensions” (2009: 139).

    Crucially, what po-mo denies explicitly or implicitly in acknowledging only “difference” is a universal human nature which is the bedrock for sociality, common bonds, and community. Without a common human nature, we are all condemned to “bowl alone.” In brief, in denying universals and absolutes, po-mo reduces the complex human being to a one-dimensional man driven by instincts, socialized by prevailing cultural prejudices, and incapable of reaching for the spiritual nexus of transcendence. To be relevant, then, the twenty-first century university needs to rediscover the universals of law–natural law and the moral law. This is imperative, in Gairdner’s view, because

"all normal human beings carry the compass of natural law within: an innate sense of the rightness of things like justice, truth telling, fairness, equity, love, courage, wisdom, and so on, which are understood universally as rough standards of moral conduct and right reason by which all human beings attempt to guide themselves" (2009: 193).

Gairdner concludes that this, then, is the natural law. Tradition–a shorthand for centuries of accumulated experience and a measure of wisdom–teaches also that the natural law and the moral law reflect the divine law, and point to a universal Law-Giver or God. This is perhaps what makes natural law and the moral law suspect to those who are a law unto themselves.

                                                       BEYOND POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

    Some might question whether moral-ethical relativism is the root cause of the crisis of the contemporary university. Thus, John Agresto claims that he has “never met a relativist in academe in all my life, at least not in the humanities and social sciences” (in Maranto 2009: 288). Agresto explains that: “In fact, those most bent on proselytizing their students are always the farthest from relativism that one can find. They know what is true and what is false, what is just and unjust, good and bad, and if they have their way, their students will soon know it, too. Proselytizing is, in a way, their ‘job’” (in Maranto 2009: 288-89). Agresto’s description of proselytizing fits to a “T” the postmodern turn in the academy known as “political correctness,” enforced by the PC thought police with controversial “speech codes,” obligatory “sensitivity” training for infractions, and ideologically pre-loaded freshman orientation for incoming students, which inculcate such “progressive” ideologies as multiculturalism (code name for disparaging Western civilization), radical feminism, gay-lesbian activism, and sundry left-liberal intellectual fashions.

    In brief, postmodernism in the academy found a congenial ally in “political correctness” as a method of “deconstruction.” Gairdner suggests that attacking the West became the fashionable aim of the politics of postmodernism, while deconstruction, “politically speaking, and despite protestations to the contrary, was indeed about destruction: of Western philosophy, morality, society, science, the lot. Derrida’s brand of radical linguistic polyvalence was the tool” (2009: 264-65). Gairdner is hopeful that the postmodern era may be coming to an end, since there is a “recurring hunger for universals” (2009: 303). As Gairdner muses, “universals of all kinds point to a common humanity,” while po-mo was “a repudiation not only of all standards, foundations, and concepts of the general and universal but even of the very idea of such things” (2009: 300-3).

    It is only unclear why Agresto faults “the libertarian right” and “the most vociferous critics of PC,” rather than “the left,” as the worst offenders in terms of proselytizing students, when the overwhelming evidence amassed in the multi-authored volume on The Politically Correct University points in the other direction (in Maranto 2009: 289). In Agresto’s view, to reform the politically correct university entails reforming the liberal arts. But he offers few pointers beyond the usual lip-service to the liberal arts as an ideal. Paradoxically, Agresto acknowledges what he calls

"the subtler politicization that imbues many courses, often without the professor, much less the students, seeing it. In some places, a Marxist or feminist analysis just seems natural. That’s the way the professor was taught in graduate school, that’s what he thinks constitutes analysis, and that’s the basis on which he constructs his syllabus. He doesn’t see it as political, because he thinks that way of looking at the material is what professors do” (in Maranto 2009: 291).

    Agresto’s admission concerning the creeping politicization of the academy confirms the cogency of our thesis regarding the urgent need for re-imagining the university as free inquiry in the quest for truth, and an institution fostering moral and intellectual integrity par excellence. Yet Agresto’s proposed remedy is less than convincing. It is too general and abstract, invoking administrative restructuring and vague reforms rather than coming to grips with salient issues underlying the crisis of the contemporary university. According to Agresto: “Truly to begin to break the back of the PC university would involve reforming graduate education, reforming the nature of the PhD, and breaking the nexus between ‘cutting-edge scholarship’ and earning a doctorate. Yet hardly any of the foes of political correctness seem prepared to talk about this” (in Maranto 2009: 291).

    Institutional reforms may, indeed, prove helpful, especially with regard to encouraging interdisciplinary exploration by breaking down barriers between disciplines to overcome the departmental compartmentalization of knowledge and resulting overspecialization referred to in common parlance as “knowing too much about too little.” Institutional reforms can also help advance such crucial objectives as more comprehensive student counseling and more focused career preparation combined with a strong core curriculum in the liberal arts, more transparency in fiscal management, oversight and accountability, more full-time opportunities and shared governance, and even a more congenial public perception of the reality and promise of higher education. But as educators we know that the key to reforming any institution–including the university–needs to begin with people: students, faculty, and administrators.

    In sum, the university needs to re-dedicate itself to the search for truth about ourselves and the world without cant and politically correct ideologies. Beyond a multiversity, a true university would better fulfill the American Promise of higher education, reflecting Newman’s ideal of the “enlargement of the mind” and a “wholeness of vision” in educating the whole person. Such education might even be conducive to the rediscovery and a new appreciation of the timeless Biblical injunction that “ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8: 32).

    C. S. Lewis formulated the classic dilemma of freedom of choice and ethics as a quest for identifying truth as “correspondence to reality,” also known as the Tao (the Way or the Road), defined as “the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are” (1996: 30). Lewis further points out St. Augustine’s conception of virtue as “ordo amoris, the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind and degree of love which is appropriate to it” (1996: 28-29). This leads to the conclusion that truth, freedom, and virtue are the quintessential aspects of the human striving for excellence and self-understanding as prerequisites for a more felicitous social life. These are also the irreplaceable ideals for a higher education which can empower individuals to discern what is true, good, and beautiful.

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Oskar Gruenwald, IIR-ICSA Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies.