Universities: Servant, Critic, or Partner?
Universities: Servant, Critic, or Partner?
I've been reading Harold T. Shapiro's 2005 book, A Larger Sense of Purpose: Higher Education and Society. His major theme, neatly summarized on p. 15, is that the American research university must retain
“its dual role as … society’s servant and society’s critic. [U[niversities … must continue to provide programs that the society itself has identified as important as well as raising those questions and issues that society does not want to address. In some ways, universities can meet their responsibilities only by being a nuisance to the existing order of things."
This is a formulation that I like quite a bit. However, in this simple form it glosses over the great and growing differences in society. Evidently, Shapiro means the dominant, prosperous components of society; but we need to remember that there are many who don't share those comforts. Perhaps the formulation needs to be supplemented with that which Finley Peter Dunne concocted about newspapers a century ago, but which applies just as well to universities:
"The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."
In addition, in the context of public engagement, the idea of partnership between the university and the public is missing. Casting the university as either servant or critic makes its interaction with society too unidirectional. There is a middle way.