The Dissenting academy

Title: The Dissenting academy
Creator: Schrag, Peter
Language: English
Year: 1968
Subject: Higher education -- Social aspects.; Intellect -- Social aspects.
Rights
Abstract: From Saturday Review, February 17, 1968.
Fulltext: force. New people, new groups who reject second hand thinking and second hand living and who are committed to making a bet ter world, already exist. We must lose no time in recog nizing them, meeting them, comparing experience with them, and forming new or ganic fronts together. — Da nilo Dolci, Extracts from Saturday Review, July 6, 1968. THE DISSENTING ACADEMY For most Americans, a declining measure of intellectual independence in the universities is prob ably of no more concern than the discontinuance of a favored line of groceries at the supermarket, and probably for the same reason. Higher education offers commodities to the customer who rarely re gards academics as individuals whose services should include social and humanistic criticism. As John Kenneth Galbraith has suggested, the university is growing great as a servant — not as a critic — of the industrial society. . . . The engagement of aca demic intellectuals in government policymaking and as consultants to industry, the growth of the gov ernment research contract, the very success of higher education can be as dangerous to independence as overt political pressure. — Peter Schrag in Saturday Review February 17, 1968. August 1968 13