First – and perhaps surprisingly – there is a profoundly political element in the university. It is taken for granted that those who exercise power in a society need to be formed in a particular culture. They need to learn how to reflect on the social interactions around them; they need to learn how to evaluate the reasons that people give for actions and policies. Part of that training in how to evaluate reasons and arguments – and also ideals and aims – has always involved reference to the basic texts of a culture, sacred or not, which are regarded as setting out patterns of human life in society that continue to serve as an orientation….
Universities should devote serious resource and energy to encouraging public debate on the shared values of their society. This does not mean that a university as such should be a nursery of simple activism and criticism; it does mean, though, that a good university is always looking for ways of opening up general intellectual debate about common hopes and values to the community around it. It does not exist only to refine the work of the specialist…
It is only when universities are free to pose their own questions that they fulfil their function of enabling people to ask about the foundations of what others take for granted.
What is distinctive about the university is that it seeks to nurture the ability to understand political processes and to weigh political arguments rather than giving uncritical loyalty to any programme.
The student who is in this sense discovering what it is to be a ‘political agent’ is discovering what it is to exercise thoughtful responsibility in the life of a society. And this is where a narrow definition of what the social and the political might mean has to be balanced by some historical perspective; it is in fact where (in a very broad sense) the ‘classics’ of a society are relevant, so that a good university allows space for students to test their ideals and concepts against a historical tradition expressed not only in opportunities for discussion but also in the university’s public ceremony and its standards and protocols for intellectual exchange. By its very existence, the good university expresses certain philosophical commitments – to civil discourse, to liberty of expression, to careful and honest self-questioning, and to the possibility of creating trust through the processes of fair argument and exploration of evidence. This cannot be reduced to the narrow atmosphere of pressure-groups.
Ideally, then, the elements of awareness of history and tradition, openness to intellectual innovation and concern for the widest possible engagement with public life should come together in the university to help nurture adult and responsible citizens. But for us in Europe, there are, of course, two major factors which complicate still further the position of the university. One of these has already been hinted at: it is a political and economic climate in which the expectation of short-term and practical results has affected attitudes to ‘free’ intellectual endeavour in some very adverse ways. A proper concern for accountability has produced a real anxiety about the volume of work produced by universities, and an increasingly sharp competitive spirit between institutions. Every university has to promote itself in two directions – towards the public, to keep up recruitment, and towards funding bodies, which in Britain and much of continental Europe will be under government direction, to persuade them of its profitability. This is not a climate that will disappear overnight; it is part of the way in which ‘market’ models have come to dominate so many areas of social and institutional life in our context.
The second of these challenges is the sheer diversity of the cultural scene in the modern West; not only has British culture, for example, lost a degree of contact with and confidence in a history or identity shared by British citizens, it is now inclusive of active and often lively immigrant cultures, whose relation with the majority may be in various ways strained. Against such a background, what would it mean to see the university as offering an induction into some kind of culture appropriate to people who will grow into public responsibility? Isn’t this bound to be hopelessly compromised by the existing dominance of one culture or class or ethnic group (as has been the case in Britain)? In the vast perspective of China’s diverse cultures, similar questions are bound to be in evidence; what role has the university in promoting social and political stability in a context where much rests upon the ability of government to sustain national cohesion and a universal pattern of law, welfare and equity?
Any university now attempting to promote the advantage of one racial or class interest would forfeit its credibility and authority. But the alternative is not an acceptance of pure ‘postmodern’ diversity, a chaos of non-communicating discourses for mutually isolated communities.
Archbishop Rowan Williams What is a university? Speech given in Wuhan, China
