ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

The Academy and the future: Constancy within change

By Jonathan F. Fanton

President

New School for Social Research

A paper presented at the November 18, 1988, meeting of the ACRL Greater New York Metropolitan Area Chapter.

The prospect of reflecting on what the Academy will look like in the 21st century, and what the implications are for libraries and librarians, is daunting. It brings to mind Felix Frankfurter’s words: “.. .to pierce the curtain of the future, to give shape and visage to mysteries still in the womb of time, is the gift of imagination.” My imagination has enough trouble getting through the next year let alone into the next century. The daily pressures of fund raising, budget planning, faculty appointments, and myriad activities that absorb a president’s life, led me to think for a moment I should pass up your invitation. But I remembered that in the early hours of January first, I resolved to accept some speaking engagements that pushed me to think in terms broader than I normally have the luxury of doing. So I thank you for this opportunity to be with you and to grapple with the challenging issues your conference poses.

I must confess that as a university president, I have had far less time to enjoy the pleasures of libraries or debate their purposes and needs than in my earlier teaching and administrative lives. We choose careers in the Academy because of the special value we place on learning and knowledge and on the human endeavor from which they emerge. The library is the very soul of that endeavor. It is no surprise that when we in academic life enter a library, we feel at home; in fact, we feel we encounter our true selves.

I have enjoyed working in libraries, and I have been involved in academic library administration. At Yale, and at the University of Chicago, my responsibilities at one time or another included working on library issues. At Chicago, for example, I had the task of negotiating the merger of the John Crerar Library into the University of Chicago Library, served on the building committee and helped raise the necessary funds. I even took a crack at trying to understand how the Research Libraries Group and the OCLC might find common ground. This is not to say my professorial and administrative experience enables me to tell you anything about college and research libraries that you don’t already know. But it does suggest that my heart is in the right place.

When I was teaching American history at Yale and Chicago, I routinely warned my students that history is one long continuous flow. It is not, as we are so prone to think, neatly packaged by presidential terms, wars, depressions, decades or even centuries. These are convenient categories, benchmarks useful to historians, writers and students, but they do not necessarily reflect reality.

And though this historical flow is continuous, its direction is neither certain nor pre-ordained. Daniel Boorstin, a man who has affected the thinking of many of us, noted that “perhaps the greatest danger in machine-dominated America is the temptation to believe that our world is more predictable than it really is. Each triumph of our technology tempts us to redraw the geography of our imagination… We everyday citizens, the democratic citizenry of technologically triumphant America— more than any other people before us—have come to take for granted everyday violations of yesterday’s common sense.”

Given these assumptions about history, you may find my conclusion on the future of the Academy surprising. I expect that the “New” Academy will look very much like the old in its basic configuration and purpose. But the environment in which it functions will place tremendous stresses and strains on that purpose. The advent of a new century does not imply a radical change, a sharp break with the past. Rather, it signals an intensification of the dilemmas we now face and an ever-mounting set of challenges, albeit ones that not are easily foreseen.

A journalist friend of mine covering education for the New York Times often asks me what is new in higher education. One day, after dutifully reciting the usual topics, I said to him, “Why don’t you write an article on how little undergraduate education has changed in this century?” The number of credits required to graduate have periodically altered; new majors have appeared; we now have advanced placement and double degrees and a new class of institutions called community colleges— but the basics, the fundamentals, have remained the same. Four years of study after high school graduation; work in the liberal arts or specialized fields; repeating cyclical patterns in curriculum; and faculty trained in graduate institutions that have not changed that much either. The major changes, in fact, have been demographic not academic: access to higher education is now much more democratic. Fully 60% of our high school graduates now pursue some kind of post-secondary education compared with less than half that number in 1950; and now have 12.5 million students in the Academy compared to a total of 2.5 million in 1950.

These quantitative changes have had an impact on institutional arrangements, but the structure is basically the same as it was at the turn of the 20th century. There have been introduced into the system experimental programs or colleges that have briefly flowered and most died; and there has been a never-ending debate about the nature of the undergraduate curriculum ever since Harvard adopted the free elective system seventy-five years ago. In that period of time we have gone back and forth between core programs and elective programs, distribution requirements and concentrations, preparation for work or preparation for life. I expect these arguments and positions to replay regularly, thus curriculum changes in the future will be very much like the changes we have had in the past.

So I guess I do not see dramatic changes ahead in the curriculum which have major implications for libraries. That is not to say the future is uninteresting or that there are not some trends to note.

The world is of course smaller than it has ever been before and still shrinking rapidly. This affects everyone’s perspective. Students and faculty have growing interests in other cultures, and tens of thousands now travel abroad regularly. That is an important difference from my generation. Our students think nothing of going to Europe for a week, taking an expedition to Africa, China or Cuba—if they have learned how to get there from Canada; political barriers do not deter the way they did in the past. Few think of the Iron Curtain anymore. These developments necessarily affect values and curriculum—more non-western studies, especially history, greater focus on gender and minorities, a resurgence in the study of foreign languages and literatures, and a broad range of comparative inquiry. All these changes are desirable and important, but not fundamental or structural.

Another trend we have all seen, and many of us have welcomed, is a growing recognition of the inter-relatedness of knowledge (a notion developed by the Greeks some centuries ago). Every field of study is now intimately affected by work in other disciplines; for example we now have fields like medical anthropology, unimaginable two decades ago. The recent revival of interest in the Core Curriculum is a clear manifestation of the need students and faculty feel to make connections. I am hopeful that we will begin to find larger numbers of students reading more broadly in fields other than their area of specialization. It is important that those interested in science and business begin to grasp the need for a grounding in philosophy and ethics; and that humanists recognize the importance of computers and technology to a world in which they must function. This is simply C. P. Snow revisited, but it is only with this rising generation that we see real ease in moving across those boundaries which somehow so seriously limited my own generation. And when students move across boundaries more easily than their teachers, librarians—who by definition and disposition are interdisciplinary—will play an even more important educational role. You may use more computers and other high tech devices, but your instructional responsibility, one on one, will carry forward well into the next century.

So to use Boorstin’s metaphor, technological triumph has not changed the geography of the Academy. It may have cut a few new roads through the terrain. And it may have changed the habits of those who reside on or pass along the academic landscape. New forests have grown up, and others have been chopped down. It may be easier to traverse the ground, but the topography remains much as it has been for generations.

And yet, what many of you in your profession have called the Information Age has simply become overwhelming. There are limits to what we can comprehend, order and understand. I am reminded of the words of Hannah Arendt, whose office was just a few steps from this room, when she said, “To expect truth to come from thinking signifies that we mistake the need to think with the urge to know.” Our urge to know has been confused with thinking and truth, and the time has come to realize the unsatisfying nature of this frantic chase. Our interest in the future lies in the quest for a good society. In my view, such a society depends more on qualitative measures than mastery of quantitative data. I would suggest it is time to slow down and reflect more on what it is reasonable to know. But what is reasonable to know may change from time to time, and those changes cannot be predicted. Moreover, what is reasonable to know at a given time should not impose limits on all that is known or on the search for greater knowledge. I hope that the next generation will be less tyrannized by the information explosion than we have been.

Librarians will constantly face this question of the total sum of knowledge versus the needs of the moment. As a non-librarian but one who is responsible for the care and maintenance of a library, I take this view: Every decision I have been part of to invest more in library facilities has been a good one. I am glad, for example, we ignored the advice of those at Yale who believed the book would soon be obsolete and so we should not build the Seely Mudd storage library. All evidence is to the contrary as we see usage climb sharply in all libraries. And I agree with Boorstin’s spirited advocacy for further investment in the Library of Congress when he said: “Threats from without and problems within demand every shred of the most ancient wisdom and the most recent information—to cope with the challenges of a nuclear war, to sieze the opportunities of unprecedented technological progress, and to enrich the resources of freedom…Knowledge is not simply another commodity. On the contrary. Knowledge is never used up; it increases by diffusion and grows by dispersion. . .any willful cut in our resources of knowledge is an act of self destruction.”

My counsel offers no solace to university presidents or government policy-makers who seek a rationale for economies in libraries and information services. Indeed, I submit that as knowledge and information become more abundant, and storage and access more expensive and complicated, we must plan for systematic investments in our research libraries so that our national trust is not abdicated to the for-profit enterprises. No doubt you can define better than I this problem, but I have been increasingly concerned about the changing position of the Academy in the society and that certainly has implications for libraries as well.

It is one of the glories of American society that we have the strongest system of higher education in the world. One characteristic that adds to its strength is the mix of public and private institutions and a hard-won tradition of academic freedom. There are forces at work threatening the independence of even the strongest universities which are, in my view, less free than when I began nearly 25 years ago. And yet we hardly talk about these trends, let alone offer resistance.

We have contributed to the problem through our own behavior. Higher education has had a special relationship with American society, something in the nature of an unwritten compact. We have received many benefits—tax exemption, tolerance if not respect for academic freedom, generous financial support—and these have been conferred in recognition of the central role universities play in a democratic society through training, the discovery and dissemination of new knowledge, and the transmission and preservation of core values.

And for a while the public felt higher education was living up to its part of the bargain. The wonders of scientific research flowed from university laboratories, fueled by government underwriting in the wake of Sputnik. The public had an intuitive belief that the application of social science could solve our social problems, and that scholars and intellectuals could guide national leaders in practical and moral choices.

But in the more than two decades I have spent as a university administrator and history teacher, the perception of private universities and their status in our society has changed sharply. The former Secretary of Education has characterized them as “greedy.” The flow of advice from scholars to policy makers is at a low ebb. Universities are no longer perceived as neutral territory where conflicting ideas and ideologies can be aired and tested. Quite a change in one generation. While the reasons for this change are complex, universities must bear some of the responsibility.

The compact of which I spoke assumes that universities are common ground, officially neutral with respect to specific policy issues. However, once, the public perceives that universities are not officially neutral on matters of public policy unconnected to education, and that universities act in ways barely distinguishable from any lobby, the compact is in trouble.

The disenchantment began in the Vietnam era. Invited government officials, Robert McNamara at Harvard, for example, or those advocating unpopular views, such as William Shockley at Yale, were prevented from speaking. Episodes of censorship or disruption have chilled the atmosphere for free speech ever since. Invitations to controversial speakers, often government officials, are increasingly rare at major universities these days.

Erosion of the free exchange of ideas on campus was largely a consequence of political activism by students and faculty which placed a higher priority on immediate political goals than on the traditional responsibilities of the university. As the Vietnam War dragged on, activist students and faculty pressured university presidents and trustees— because of the perceived moral influence of universities—to condemn the war and work for its end. A few boards actually passed resolutions to that effect, but fortunately most understood that trustees in their official capacity should not take stands on policy issues. To do so would compromise the trustees’ capacity, already under siege, to protect intellectual and academic freedom on campus. If the university board took an official position on a particular issue, would students and faculty feel as free to invite speakers with alternative views? Would they feel more justified in disrupting a speech by someone who contradicted the official view?

As the Vietnam war wound down, concern for South Africa picked up. Early efforts to cast the university as an ethical investor focused on proxy policy, and were based on an intricate rationale that sought to protect the university’s neutral role, yet recognize that universities are an integral part of society. But through the 1970s, university investment policies gradually strayed beyond that rationale.

Under the intense national concern about apartheid, many university boards in effect developed an official policy toward South Africa and used their investment power to advance that policy. While universities claim South Africa is a special case, no president has yet offered a set of principles to distinguish it from other examples of gross human rights abuse.

At the same time that educational institutions have stepped further into the realm of official stands, they have also wandered into smoke-filled rooms and taken a stab at the game of power politics. Consider the high-pressured lobbying evident in the skirmish over tax reform in recent years. Or, worse, the special deals benefiting single institutions which by-passed the peer review process. An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education last year detailed how dozens of universities received special federal appropriations worth millions of dollars. Such deals make higher education appear like just another special interest feeding at the public trough.

In short, universities have behaved in ways that seem to invite the public to view them like every other institution in society, and hence the proper subject of regulation. And so the once special, protected status of the university, largely left alone to its own internal ways or making judgments, now is very much a part of the political world. Here I speak not of the application of government rules for workers’ compensation, access for the handicapped, affirmative action, asbestos removal, stringent city and state building codes, smoking ordinances, and all the rest. Nor do I speak of the rise of unions and other forms of collective action which certainly influence the ecology of universities. Rather I am concerned about the intrusion of courts and legislatures into matters once left for collegial judgment. It is, of course, unhappy members of the university community who invite the courts in, but we will see in the future the judiciary all too willing to replace collegial patterns of judgment with formal, mandated and enforced notions of due process. A student unhappy about a disciplinary action appeals to the courts. A parent at conflict with a child’s conduct holds the university responsible and sues. Worst of all, faculty and staff are taking advantage of age, gender, race and other protected characteristics to challenge in the courts promotion and retention decisions which go against them.

And, as the university itself becomes increasingly vulnerable to such legal actions, you will find, I expect, that trustees and presidents begin to involve themselves in the details of decisions that once were entrusted to collegial discussion and determination. What I fear is the erosion of decentralized responsibility which has been a core strength of the academic enterprise for all of the twentieth century.

Other threats to our independence come through our quest for resources, especially from those sources where consulting arrangements with companies can subtly influence the direction of research in more applied channels and distort the character of graduate education.

And some of these activities are not even subtle, as they have been in the past. Just this week I read aboutB.E.S.T. America, a new for-profit venture, designed to establish and market to private industry, a national database composed of faculty specialties and research facilities at all our institutions of higher learning. Financed by corporate subscribers, it looks to me like we have here simply more evidence of the power and influence of the corporate world on the academic world. Promoted as an activity that will encourage and increase funding of research, the long-term damage is simply a further contamination of the independence and freedom of the university. And in your own field, I fear, the temptation will be great on the part of many, to see libraries and librarians as obsolete, to confuse information with knowledge, and to then invite commercial enterprises to assume a much larger responsibility for those resources essential to research and teaching.

Thus to my mind, the most serious questions about the future of the Academy relate not to changes that will occur within it, how curricular styles will ebb and flow, for instance. The principal question is the nature of the relationship between the Academy and the general public, and especially the public’s understanding of why the independence of universities is fundamental to the future of free societies. It is critical that faculty and administrators join in such discussions. We all have a powerful stake, for ourselves and for society, in preserving the integrity and independence of the American university. It seems to me libraries and librarians have a crucial role to play in this effort.

I was not hyperbolizing when I said that the library is the soul of the Academy. It is the living center, the place where all the strivings of the Academy converge. The mission of libraries is, in the end, the preservation of our culture, our intellectual heritage. And if there is a single, overarching responsibility of librarians in the next decades, it is to protect, and extend that fundamental mission in a time of growing complexity and confrontation.

The essential obligations of the Academy have not changed, but we must renew our society’s understanding of them. The job will tax our imaginations as never before. But the answers will not be found within the rush of technological change nor the explosion of information that seems to dominate our lives. They will come from the processes of reason and dialogue that must always characterize our institutions. The need for libraries to reaffirm their central cultural and academic role will never be greater. And we, who have the ultimate responsibility for the health of our libraries, must help and support them.