unit 7 the Role of the Academy in Times of Crisis

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The opportunity to receive higher education is a privilege that brings with it responsibilities. The President of Princeton University talks about this in her inaugural speech.

Unit 7 THE ROLE OF THE ACADEMY IN TIMES OF CRISIS

1 Today the academy holds a highly privileged place in American society because of a about the long-standing national consensus about the value of education. One of my predecessors, President Harold Dodds, said in his inaugural address in 1933 that "No country spends money for education, public or private, so lavishly as does the United States. Americans have an almost childlike faith in what formal education can do for them." That faith is based on a conviction that the vitality of the United States, its creative and diverse cultural life, its is national security and the robustness of its democratic institutions owe much to the quality of institutions of higher education.

2 Our society’s confidence in its institutions of higher education is expressed through the generous investments of the federal and state government in basic and applied research investment that wisely couple support for research with support for graduate education. It is also expresses through federal and state investments that subsidize the cost of higher education for those who cannot afford to pay, investments by private foundations and charities who see colleges and universities as the best routes for achieving their strategic goals, and investments by individuals and by the private sector, who see universities as the incubators of future health and prosperity. In return for this broad support, society rightfully expects certain things from us. It expects the generation of new ideas and the discovery of new knowledge, the exploration of complex issues in an open and collegial manner and the preparation of the next generation of citizens and leaders. In times of trouble, it is especially important that we live up to these expectations.

3 The medieval image of the university as an ivory tower, with scholars turned inward in solitary contemplation, immunized from the cares of the day, is an image that has been superseded by the modern university constructed not of ivory, but of a highly porous material, one that allows free diffusion in both directions. The academy is of the world, not apart from it. Its ideas, crafted over many generations, are meant to suffuse the national consciousness. Its scholars and teachers are meant to move in and out of the academy in pursuit of opportunities to use their expertise in public service, in pursuit of creative work that will give us illumination and insight and in pursuit of ways to turn laboratory discoveries into useful things. Our students engage the world with a strong sense of civic responsibility, and when they graduate they become alumni who do the same. This is as it should be.

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4 The search for new ideas and knowledge is not and cannot be motivated by utilitarian concerns. Rather it depends on the ability to think in new and creative ways. When the Nobel laureate John Nash developed the mathematical concepts underlying non- cooperative game theory8 as a graduate student at Princeton, he could not foresee that those concepts would be used today to analyze election strategies and the causes of war and to make predictions about how people will act. When Professor of Molecular Biology Eric Wieschaus' set out as a young scientist to identify genes that pattern the body plan of the fruit fly embryo, he could not know that he would identify genes that play a central role in the development of human cancer. We have learned that we cannot predict with any accuracy how discoveries and scholarship will influence future generations. We also have learned that it is unwise to search only in predictable places, for new knowledge often depends upon preparing fertile ground in obscure places where serendipity and good luck, as well as deep intelligence, can sprout. Freedom of inquiry, which is one of our most cherished organizing principles, is not just a moral imperative, it is a practical necessity.

5 Just as we have an obligation to search widely for knowledge, so we also have an obligation to ensure that the scholarly work of the academy is widely disseminated, so that others can correct it when necessary, or build on it, or use it to make better decisions, develop better products or construct better plans. In the days ahead, I hope that our country's decision-makers will draw on the knowledge that resides on our campuses, on historians who can inform the present through deep understanding of the past, philosophers who can provide frameworks for working through issues of right and wrong, economists whose insights can help to get the economy back on track, engineers who know how to build safer buildings, scientists who can analyze our vulnerabilities to future attack and develop strategies for reducing those vulnerabilities, and scholars in many fields who can help us understand the motivations of those who would commit acts of terrorism here and throughout the world.

6 Let me now turn to the third obligation that we have to society: the education of the next generation of citizens and leaders. Princeton's view of what constitutes a liberal arts education was expressed well by Woodrow Wilson, our 13th President, whose eloquent words I read at Opening Exercises:"What we should seek to impart in our colleges, is not so much learning itself as the spirit of learning. It consists in the power to distinguish good reasoning from bad, in the power to digest and interpret evidence, in the habit of catholic observation and a preference for the non-partisan point of view, in an addiction to clear and logical processes of thought and yet an instinctive desire to interpret rather than to stick to the letter of reasoning, …… 此处隐藏：7821字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……