左派大學
The Left University
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詹姆斯·皮爾森/著 吳萬偉/譯
一、
如今美國大學有超過一千六百萬的學生，是歷史上人數最多的時期。再過兩年這個數字將超過一千七百萬，而且會繼續增長，因為2008年的高中畢業生是歷史上人數最多的。現在18到24歲的年輕人中將近70%的在上大學，高中畢業生中的80%以上要上大學。上大學幾乎成為我們社會年輕人必須度過的人生階段，成為找到中產階級工作的必要條件。
今年的新生進入大學校園后，會看到一個奇特的世界，里面有赫赫有名的運動專業、工商管理專業、大型科學研究所等用左翼意識形態術語確定自身定位的種種機構。這種情況在100所左右不管是公立還是私立的名牌大學里尤其明顯，它們都是能夠從眾多申請者中挑選優秀學生的單位。對于人文科學和社會科學院系也是如此，它們認定學術機構的政治和社會功能。這些學生進入了我們可以稱為“左派大學”的世界。
左派大學的意識形態是反對美國，反對資本主義的。按照我的理解，左派大學主要是為長期以來遭受西方壓迫的受害者群體---女人，黑人，墨西哥人，同性戀者，以及其他被官方認定的受壓迫者群體爭取平等權利，為這些人代言。這就是每個大學系主任，教務長，校長都必須發誓遵從和忠誠的所謂的“多樣化”意識形態。
其實，當代大學的多元化只是表現在定義和意識形態上，不是在實踐和現實生活中。斯坦利?羅思曼（Stanley Rothman）,羅伯特?林奇特（Robert Lichter）,尼爾?內維特（Neil Nevitte）最近對大學教師的全國性調查顯示超過72%的人擁有自由主義或者左派的核心觀點，而只有15%的人擁有保守派觀點。該調查還發現特別是1980年以來，學術界的輿論穩定地往左派方向移動，因為受60年代思潮影響的人開始控制學術界的大權。在政治觀點與學術問題密切相關的人文和社會科學領域，觀點的分布更是向左派傾斜。和從前的教授不同，現在的許多老師相信自己有責任在課堂教學中宣傳政治觀點。因此名牌大學的學生報告說他們在人文社會科學課程學習中不斷受到政治宣傳的轟炸。
該研究者還發現大學教師中民主黨員占總數的一半，而共和黨員的比例只有11%。沒有人會感到吃驚，因為推動大學的元化意識形態正是民主黨的核心觀念。其他研究者也發現更加傾斜的分布比例。圣克拉拉大學（Santa Clara）經濟學家丹尼爾?克萊恩（Daniel Klein）在對全國教授的調查發現在人文社科領域民主黨教授和共和黨教授的比例是7：1。與此同時，大學管理者和學院繼續推動多元化運動，雖然大學已經在教授們最應該關心的思想領域嚴重地一元化了。
這就是左派大學。它們已經與美國社會上的其他自由派團體、左翼機構如好萊塢，工會組織，大型慈善基金會，新聞媒體，當然還有民主黨結為非正式的政治同盟。所有這些機構都信奉多元化的意識形態，為學術界在不斷左傾的進程中提供政治保護和鼓勵。
但是有跡象表明左派大學的日子屈指可數了。左派意識形態很快就要遭遇新一波的變化和改革。為了弄清楚為什么會出現這種變化，我們有必要先了解一下美國大學比較長的發展歷史。
二、
在美國歷史從1636年哈佛學院成立到1900年左右相當長的時期內，大學在改變美國經濟和政治發展中扮演的角色一直很微小。在整個殖民地時期和公立大學成立的19世紀初期，高等教育機構基本上是按英國模式建立起來的，由新教教派如公理會，圣公會，或者長老會創立或控制。這些機構的目的是培養性格，給年輕人傳授知識和正確的原則以便他們能從事教學，傳教，或者法律等工作。很少人會認為這些地方是產生新知識或者進行創造性實驗研究的所在。英國和美國一樣，研究和科學發現是由非學術性機構資助的，比如位于倫敦的皇家學會（Royal Society），或者位于費城的美國哲學學會（American Philosophical Society）（由富蘭克林（Benjamin Franklin）創立）。
美國締造者中確實有些人對學術機構在新政府中充當的作用非常感興趣，但是美國革命的領導人和憲法起草者中有很多在新生國家成立之前就存在的9所大學里上大學。比如漢密爾頓（Alexander Hamilton）和約翰?杰伊（John Jay）曾在國王學院（后來的紐約哥倫比亞大學）學習，杰斐遜（Thomas Jefferson）在威廉和瑪麗學院（William and Mary）上學，麥迪遜（James Madison）在新澤西學院（后來的普林斯頓）學習，富蘭克林曾是賓夕法尼亞大學的創始人。尤其是杰斐遜和麥迪遜在上大學期間接觸到自由的理想和限制性的政府，研究了約翰?洛克（John Locke），亞當?斯密（Adam Smith）和大衛?休謨（David Hume）以及其他英國啟蒙運動的杰出人物的著作。在大學時代，他們陶醉在哲學研究里，后來把這些思想作為新國家的綱領。但是這些人明白他們不是作為學者或者大學教授而是作為“文學家的共和國”（republic of letters）的成員（杰斐遜的話）。他們在歷史和哲學方面造詣很深，學習古典語言和政治為的是使用過去的經驗解決現實存在的實際問題。
杰斐遜或許因為自己的學術經驗，對大學應該培養年輕人進入“文學家共和國”，成為真正共和國的聰明領導人的觀點不以為然。就像麥迪遜一樣，他明白他們幫助建立的新共和國的秩序要求學術機構比已經存在的大學更多世俗和哲學觀點，更少宗教和職業色彩。在他們當總統期間，都建議按照這個目標成立公立大學，但是這些建議在國會里得不到贊同，因為很多議員相信共和國的安全建立在國家機構的設計上而不是培養領導階層的人的脾性上。麥迪遜本人在憲法辯論的時候就提出的觀點。因此，杰斐遜的晚年把主要精力轉向創立弗吉尼亞大學，他認為這是共和國新型大學的原型，要招收該州最優秀的學生，為他們提供用希臘羅馬語言和歷史講授的世俗教育，實際科學，和對憲法的正確理解。他活著看到了愿望的實現，1824年參加了大學的成立慶典（和麥迪遜和拉斐德（Lafayette）一起），兩年后他就去世了。
但是杰斐遜對新共和國政治培養人才的新大學視野夭折了。美國從1830年開始日益嚴重的地方主義以及對奴隸制和西部擴張的癡迷破壞了杰斐遜超越地理，個人背景和狹隘利益的文學家共和國的理想。托克維爾（Alexis de Tocqueville）在《美國的民主》（Democracy in America）中描述的贊美平等和普通人的新興杰克遜文化，對不切實際和貴族化傾向的機構表現出懷疑和不安。安德魯?杰克遜（Andrew Jackson）和他的支持者嘲笑公立大學缺乏民主，是對普通人的公開侮辱。曾經被稱為“拓荒者民主”（Pioneer democracy）明目張膽地懷疑專家的智慧。這個時期建立的新大學多數都是根據職業目標而不是杰斐遜理想指導下成立的。
因此，在19世紀的大部分時間里，學術機構的運行和改變美國面貌的重大經濟和政治事件沒有什么聯系。大學對于1820年代和1830年代新教的復興，杰克遜主義的崛起，廢奴運動的蓬勃發展，共和黨的出現，南方的脫離聯邦，內戰后工業的崛起，甚至像超驗主義思想運動等都無可奈何。那個時代的大企業家比如卡耐基（Andrew Carnegie）洛克菲勒（John D. Rockefeller）或者喬治?普爾曼（George Pullman）都是很少或者根本沒有大學經驗的白手起家者。那個世紀最重要的兩位總統杰克遜和林肯連正規的教育都很少。大學沒有舉行什么活動比如運動比賽，或者名人演講，無法成為公眾注目的中心。大學專注于教學意味著其影響力沒有超越本地圈子，也意味著大學內部不可能形成學術企業中心或等級結構。因此，在內戰將近結束的時候，大學在美國生活中仍然處于邊緣的位置。
三、
勞倫斯?維希（LAURENCE VEYSEY）在《美國大學的崛起》（The Emergence of the American University）中描述了現代大學形成于1870年到1910年。在這個階段的改革和創新中，大學開始打破以前與宗教團體的聯系，擁抱世俗的原則包括科學，進步，民主等，采用了確定高等教育到如今的研究規范和學術自由等。
大學的現代結構，即分成由一幫管理者掌握的幾個系和學院是在這個階段制訂下來的。也是在這個階段，兩大重要的改革---研究生院和選修課制度---被引進大學體制中。這是首批學術革命，創立了當今時代的大學，促使學術機構進入他們在當今生活中占據的優越地位。
在19世紀的最后幾十年里，由于受到地方派系沖突消失，拓荒者臨近終結，科學和產業的興起，以及愿意把手里積蓄的巨額財富興辦教育的富豪的鼓勵等，高等教育迅速發展。從內戰結束到1890年，美國的大學數量從500所一下子翻了一番達到1000所，學生數量翻了兩番超過了15萬人。到1910年的時候，大學在校學生人數已經達到35萬人。我們當今許多最有影響力的大學都是在這個時期創立的，包括芝加哥大學，約翰霍普金斯大學，斯坦福大學，范德比爾特大學（Vanderbilt）和克拉克大學（Clark）都是由富豪商人經濟上的支持的。這個時期的學術革命主要是由大學校長指導和推行的，這些人包括哈佛校長查爾斯?艾略特（Charles Eliot）,霍普金斯校長丹尼爾?吉爾曼（Daniel Coit Gilman）,康乃爾校長安德魯?懷特（Andrew White）,芝加哥大學校長威廉?雷尼?哈伯爾（William Rainey Harper）,斯坦福校長大衛?斯塔爾?喬丹（David Starr Jordan）和普林斯頓校長伍德羅?威爾遜（Woodrow Wilson）。可以想見大學校長的聲望多么大，普林斯頓校長威爾遜在1910年參加競選新澤西州州長，兩年后當選美國總統。
這次革命的智慧靈感和機構模式并不是來自杰斐遜或者弗吉尼亞大學，或者任何別的美國源頭。而是來自18世紀初期給德國學術界產生革命變化的理想主義者。大學模式來自1810年普魯士教育部長洪堡特（Wilhelm von Humboldt）創立的柏林大學，他受到理想主義哲學家費希特（Fichte）康德（Kant）黑格爾（Hegel）的影響，這些人認為學者的任務是尋求不受政治和宗教當局約束的科學、哲學和道德上的真理。最開始是研究機構的柏林大學就是建立在這樣的信念上：真理不是已知的，傳授下來的東西，而是不斷探索和不斷修正的內容。它納入了大學教授選擇研究內容和擔任課程的自主性做法，把學生看作科學研究領域中的初級合伙者，也就是說在接受培訓的研究者和教授。這種新的機構把大學的目的從神學，傳統，和職業教育引向科學和世俗研究的方向。同時大學也拋棄了轉向古典作家尋求道德教育和政治指導的做法。新大學因而把教授而不是學生，宗教團體或者公共官員置于機構的核心地位，因為是教授最終決定研究什么，講授什么。
德國研究型大學的模式在美國內戰后的及時年里迅速推行開來，1876年霍普金斯大學成立，作為第一個主要從事研究生教育的機構。已經去世的學者愛德華?希爾斯（Edward Shils）把這稱為“西半球學術歷史上最具有決定性意義的一個事件。”希爾斯指出這個創新給其他院校施加了壓力也必須建立自己的研究機構和研究生院。哈佛很快就成立的自己的藝術和科學研究生院，以便跟上霍普金斯。斯坦福大學是按照類似的原則1891年成立的，緊跟著加州大學成立。洛克菲勒資助成立的芝加哥大學成立于1892年，大學老師的選聘和晉升主要根據科研成果。中西部的大學尤其是密執安，威斯康星，伊利諾斯等都在擁抱研究型大學模式。就是在這里霍普金斯的改革，出現了大學之間競爭地位和名聲的重要領域，通過這種競爭，美國的現代大學誕生了。
希爾斯強調美國采用德國大學模式產生的深遠影響當然是正確的。在美國，就像在德國一樣，研究模式讓教授的地位從教師轉變為獨立的學者和研究者。教授不再傳授普遍接受的真理和傳統的道德理想，而是在追求新知識的情況下對這些真理和理想進行嚴格的考察和審視。教授們作為科研機構的新職員很快就宣稱他們是決定課程內容，新教師聘用和提升等問題的權威。給予教授教學和科研廣闊空間的學術自由的現代原則也是作為這些前提的自然后果而確立了。正如霍爾姆斯（Oliver Wendell Holmes）所說法律就是法官說過的話，改革后的大學就是大學教授決定要做的事情。
隨著現代大學逐漸成型，大學老師開始組建專門的院系，或者科室，各自有自己學習，研究和發表成果的正式規定。正是在這個時期各種學會開始成立，包括美國歷史學會（American Historical Association (1884)，美國經濟學會（American Economic Association (1885),美國物理學會（American Physical Society (1899),美國政治學會（American Political Science Association (1903),美國社會學會（American Sociological Association (1905)這些都是全國性的學會，每年舉行全國大會，出版專門刊登代表本協會研究成果水平的刊物。這些協會在某種程度上成為全國性的團體，它們讓教授的注意力從自己學校的學生身上轉向全國各地其他院校中的本專業同行。各自領域的教授的地位建立在他們發表的研究成果基礎上，而這些成果又成為決定本專業甚至本研究所在全國地位的新基礎。
因此現代大學的出現產生了專業知識分子階層，也就是靠思想生活的男人（當然也包括一些女人）。在此之前，美國的智慧生活是由牧師和貴族（開國元勛們）控制的，到了19世紀是有獨立思想家支配的，他們通過出版著作和文章獲取收入。現在大學教授比如查爾斯?比爾德（Charles Beard）和約翰?杜威（John Dewey）也因為發表的著作和文章成為名人。不可否認的是，具有共同利益的人最終開始思想趨同。當然在美國大學里成為明星的專業知識分子也是如此。
四、
洪堡特、康德也一樣，是傳統意義上的大陸自由派知識分子，他們同情自由，理性，啟蒙運動對宗教，神學和傳統的批評。也是在這個意義上我們認為他們的學術改革是建立在理性，科學，自由的探索和追求新知識的“自由派”大學。專心創造新知識和質疑老傳統的新大學肯定與追求自由但同時受到不同的甚至相互沖突的智慧傳統影響的美國政治形成摩擦。美國革命和憲法是建立在18世紀蘇格蘭和英格蘭思想家的著作基礎上，但是現代大學主要受到產生于德國和法國等大陸思想家的著作。哈佛歷史學家默頓?懷特（Morton White）在《美國的社會思想》（Social Thought in America: The Revolt Against Formalism）中寫到大學革命的許多思想領袖都是蘇格蘭啟蒙運動和英格蘭經驗主義傳統的激烈批評者。這些人比如哲學界的杜威、經濟學界的托爾斯坦?凡伯倫（Thorstein Veblen），歷史學界的查爾斯?比爾德和詹姆斯?哈威?魯賓孫（James Harvey Robinson），法學界的霍爾姆斯都認為英國啟蒙運動的哲學思想太抽象，不是建立在經驗基礎上，不能解決現代生活的具體問題。許多人，尤其是杜威和羅賓遜是通過介紹源于黑格爾的德國歷史思想做出這些判斷的，該派學說強調文化和歷史革命是理解社會和政治的鑰匙。
正是從這個立場上，凡伯倫和其他經濟學家反對亞當?斯密和古典政治經濟學，杜威攻擊大衛?休謨，比爾德和羅賓遜批評傳統的不能把過去和當今問題結合起來的敘述性歷史學家，霍爾姆斯攻擊那些認為憲法的文字回答了關于法律的所有問題的法學家。這些思想家不僅是大學教授，還是新大學的產物。杜威和凡伯倫都在霍普金斯大學研究生院學習（還有前總統威爾遜），羅賓遜在德國弗萊堡大學獲得歷史學博士學位。所有這些人除了不是大學教授的霍爾姆斯以外，都得出結論美國憲法以及背后的哲學在面對現代生活的挑戰時是不夠的。這讓他們尋找新的智慧基礎，來解決政治，歷史，經濟，法律，和教育問題。
正是通過這些理論現代大學奠定了政治進步主義的思想基礎，國家管理的自由派定位，以及對非黨派專家的依賴。在很多情況下，大學提供了哲學和理論彈藥以外的東西。第一波大規模的進步政策試驗出現在1890年代初期，當時威斯康星大學為州長和州議會提供研究服務。后來被稱為“威斯康星思想”（Wisconsin idea），成為眾多學校效仿的模式。大學可以為政府提供信息，統計數據，技術指導，以便實行有效率的有智慧的施政，與政府形成伙伴關系。不僅如此，正如歷史學家弗里德里克?特納（Frederick Jackson Turner）說的，大學要培養擔任法官的專家和用不偏不倚的態度調停沖突的經濟利益的管理者，比如勞資沖突。雖然大學應該充當非黨派的角色，學術機構隱含的目標是通過立法和管理來控制大企業，很快美國的企業領袖就明白了。但是這種非黨派的理想是真誠的，進步議題還沒有找到一個家，哪個政黨都沒有接受這些主張。只是到了1930年代，它們在羅斯福當政的民主黨里永遠地安了家。
威斯康星思想讓大學的一個新角色大白于天下，那就是把專家和專家知識帶入政治進程中間。這是新興大學和進步運動最明顯的聯系之一，因為大學是設計和實施進步政策所需要的專家的邏輯上的來源。隨著時間的推移，越來越多的大學按照威斯康星模式建立了研究中心，最終導致公共政策學院的創立和公共政策專家群體的形成。從合眾國成立到內戰的80年左右時間里，設計憲法和政策的理論家和將它們付諸實施的是同一批人。比如麥迪遜、杰斐遜，漢密爾頓，以及后來的人物如參議員丹尼爾?韋伯斯特（Daniel Webster）,副總統約翰?卡爾霍恩（John C. Calhoun）和林肯總統。隨著大學的興起，政治理論和研究項目越來越多地被學者設計發明，如杜威，比爾德或者威斯康星教授，他們在選舉政治的領域之外操作，他們的經驗和現實情況差別很大。對專家的依賴導致自由派人士是政府的代表還是普通百姓的永久矛盾態度，因為專家雖然以人民的名義發言，他們也非常清楚如果尋求他們的認可或者贊同是實實在在的巨大風險。
所以現代大學和現代自由派運動逐漸形成幾乎同時出現決不是巧合。人們甚至進一步可以說在從內戰后到當今的140年時間里，美國自由主義的命運一直是和大學的命運糾纏不清，一方的重大變化往往伴隨著另一方平行的相應的變化。因為回顧這個階段，可以說我們在20世紀所了解的自由主義就是來源于現代大學的興起。
五、
在從1910年到1960年的50年時間里，美國學術體制繼續按照新大學模式發展。由公共資金強力支持的研究型大學大幅度增加。研究型大學和小型的人文藝術學院的差別也在迅速擴大。教授治校成為通行的標準。選修制（The elective system）基本上得到普遍推行，導致關于“核心課程”和爭論，以及對專業化和過分強調專門知識走向極端的擔心。大學學位被學生和家長看作找工作或者未來事業發展的重要條件。到了1960年代的時候，公共官員和學術領袖幾乎是全體一致地同意大學教育應該對所有人開放。
從1920年到1950年，許多名牌大學，包括哥倫比亞大學和哈佛連續不斷地努力把新的重點放在專業化和在藝術，人文，社會科學等更廣泛的課程的專門知識上，因為這些領域逐漸被呼吁加強，大學變得越來越世俗。杰斐遜關于“文學家的共和國”的理想在現代大學并沒有完全放棄。哥倫比亞大學在1920年代建立了被廣泛模仿的“當代文明”課程，目的是讓學生了解可以追溯到古希臘的西方文明的偉大著作，讓他們（在世界大戰的前夕）了解現代學術機構是如何形成的。第二次世界大戰之后，哈佛大學老師試圖用包括科學，歷史，文學，美國民主等非常廣泛內容的通才教育的核心課程來和專業化對抗。這些有思想深度的革新在某種程度上平衡了進步事業強調的專業化和政治改革，而且，他們給學術機構提供了智慧的重量，使大學與美國的過去，以及誕生國家和大學的美國文明聯系了起來。
到了1965年，美國大學在公眾評價方面恐怕處于高峰。大學里的科學家在導致第二次世界大戰取得勝利的發明中發揮了領導作用。從戰場上回來的老兵大量進入大學，使得大學呈現成熟和嚴肅的氛圍，這在從前是缺乏的。（后來也再沒有過）所有領域的教授，包括人文和藝術類的，都享受崇高的地位。大學的體育運動通過全國性的電視轉播贏得大批的觀眾。美國歷史上最龐大的戰后嬰兒潮一代開始到了上大學的年齡，造成從1960年到1970年的大學人數翻了一番（從三百五十萬人增加到八百萬人）。
回顧歷史，我們發現美國大學在1965年以后的十年左右時間里發生的根本性變化簡直和1870年到1910年形成時期的變化一樣大。這個時期政治，文化上的動蕩，加上民權運動，反對越南戰爭的風起云涌，人口數量的迅速增長等使得美國高等教育發生第二次革命，誕生了更加平等的，更加意識形態化的，更政治化的大學（總體上說），但是和以前相比學術性少了，對事業上的專心致志和活力更少了。從1960年代中期到1970年代初期這段時間里，左派大學取代了自由派大學。
六、
在這個短暫時期發生的主要變化或者倒退在美國教育歷史上是空前的：女子大學全部消失，大學對學生的道德規范也消失了，政府對勞動用工的管理擴張了，給大學施加壓力聘用女性和少數民族教授。講授課程內容和鼓吹政治立場之間的界限模糊了，甚至完全消失了，因為新的校園極端主義認為所有的教學在本質上都是政治，學術文化的自由基礎---教學和研究的自由---在政治正確的名義下受到攻擊和破壞。人文科學的融合性特征被顛覆被破壞，當人們說人文科學代表了歐洲白人男性的壓迫性傳統，往往帶有意識形態視角的新領域不斷在傳統院系之外創立起來，因而增加了更多的教授職位來容納激進思想的人士，嚴格的學術條件，包括精通外語等被軟化甚至消除了。在1950年代和1960年代就已經扭曲的教授意見根本性地轉向了左派。所有這些變化在1960年代中期到1970年代中期的喧囂十年間全面開花，在后來的十年里逐漸定型化。
在很多重要的方面，左派大學顛倒或者修改了自由派大學的假設和做法。自由派大學的設計構造對國家的前途是樂觀主義的，是朝前看的，期待民主和自由的不斷進步和發展。但是左派大學的領導人是悶悶不樂的，悲觀沮喪的，把美國的歷史看作壓迫人的故事。自由派學者相信通過理性和知識的使用不斷取得進步，但是左派學者認為理性和知識是追求大公司和保守派利益的假面具。盡管老牌自由派人士在政治中開辟出專家和專家知識的角色，左派人士則蔑視專門知識，擁抱赤裸裸建立在團體利益基礎上的多元化主張。自由派相信學術自由，而左派學者支持自己的學術自由，否認保守派或者溫和派的學術自由，否認與自己觀點不符的發言者的自由，否認學生希望了解非意識形態立場的自由。一百年前的自由派通過建立在19世紀哲學基礎上的智慧視野控制了大學，我們時代的激進分子通過組織游行示威抗議活動和精心動員的來自政府管理部門的協助的政治和政治壓力取得控制地位。
另外，左派大學里還有強大的反文化的因素，這是自由派大學里從來沒有這么明顯存在的情況。雖然自由派施加壓力要求美國資本主義和美國憲法進行實際的改革，但是1960年代的激進分子更進一步發動對美國文化和中產階級方式的全面的攻擊。他們指責該生活方式壓抑，乏味，墮落。1960年代的文化極端主義來自1950年代的垮掉的一代（Beats）對于新的校園左派有非常強的吸引力。因為它許諾了超過政治改革以外的東西：也就是說，另類的生活方式，顛倒的道德觀念，新潮的服裝樣式，嶄新的工作模式。垮掉的一代的文化極端主義因而幾乎是整體進入大學校園，因而大學最終也從中產階級生活的道德重新占有的避難所變成探索不同生活方式的試驗場。在過去，尋找放蕩不羈生活方式的美國人，或者躲避中產階級期待的人，會逃亡到鄉下，或者歐洲，如海明威或者其他作家在1920年代做的那樣，或者到格林威治村（Greenwich Village）或者舊金山，但是現在這些人都在現代大學安了家。
自由派大學里確實有明顯的弱點使得激進派能夠用來攻擊并取而代之。一百年前建立自由派大學的領袖們創立了一系列有效的防御措施來抗拒來自外部世界的攻擊，如保守派商人，財產受托人，以及與教授政治觀點不同的捐款人，或者因為個別教授的非正統觀點而企圖懲罰大學的立法者或者政客等。但結果是，對于學術自由的保護在面對來自有組織的學生和左派教授等校園內部的攻擊顯得無能為力。這些人擾亂課堂，警戒教授家庭和辦公室，占領行政大樓，對教授和管理者發出威脅，等街頭政治所用的那一套手段控制了大學。
自由派從來沒有預料到自家后院起火的情形，不知道如何對付這種局面，同時又不背叛追求理性和成果堆積起來的權威的信仰。而且，自由派基于“進步時代”（Progressive Era）一直到1950年代的理論而對美國資本主義和美國憲法的全面的批評，但是沒有能夠在現實方面取得任何實質性的改變，這個失敗讓自由派顯得無能懦弱，引來激進分子的蔑視。所以自由主義遭遇左派的猛烈攻擊，幾年之內自由主義（以及大學）就被身份政治，團體權力，和多元化取代了。而且在許多美國人眼里，自由主義迅速失掉了吸引力，和說服力，民主黨一旦與自由主義擁抱反而下降到一個次要的地位。這樣的后果顯示了支配美國大學原則的某些指標性的東西。
七、
所以美國大學在過去一個世紀中經歷了兩大革命性變化。第一個是進步改革的思想所推動，第二個是文化轉型的激進主義。第一場革命創造了自由派大學，第二場革命產生了左派大學。兩者都有深遠的影響，它們促成了自由主義和左派思想的系統闡述，因而和政治改革的廣泛運動聯系起來。左派大學已經風行30年以上，有沒有跡象顯示另外一場革命的形成呢？讓大學走向更加具有建設性的方向？
比如，不妨考慮一下過去一代的重大事件，受左翼觀點奴役的教授們既沒有先見之明，也沒有理解力。首先有共產主義和蘇聯的垮臺，據說兩者在倒臺的前一天都還被學術界專家認為運轉良好呢。隨后同樣異常的事件是社會黨政策和福利國家制度遭到懷疑和喪失信用，而市場革命在同一時間在中歐和亞洲獲得新的力量。美國作為世界唯一超級大國地位的出現讓國際關系專家不知所措，他們本來相信多極化的世界正在形成，或者說，共產主義制度和資本主義制度最終會在某點上以接近瑞典福利國家的形式上融合在一起。洛克，亞當?斯密和美國締造者所想象中的世界各地對自由的熱情對于左派學者來說是最讓人困惑不解的發展了，因為他們對此沒有任何的同情心。在國內政治領域，學術界專家聲稱福利制度在過去三十年根本沒有影響涉及都市貧窮，犯罪，家庭破裂，少女懷孕等，這是1990年代的福利改革成功所破壞的意識形態觀點。大學教授們雖然熱心世俗觀點，卻沒有預見或者明白世界各地出現的宗教極端分子的興起。外部世界一步一步地系統性地戳穿了左派學者的意識形態偏見。
但是上文只是所有錯誤，虛幻和誤解等等不斷擴張的目錄的開始。整整一代人了，大學一直在推動所謂的“多元文化主義”的研究和教學，該主張鼓吹對外國社會和文化的研究。但是在2001年恐怖分子襲擊后，我們迅速了解到美國培養的能夠了解阿拉伯語言和伊斯蘭文化的專家，能夠幫助我們了解和反擊這種新的威脅的專家實在太少了。結果說明了多元文化主義根本不是在研究外國文化或者語言，而是動員各種國內團體在美國國內發揮政治影響力罷了。在內容上，“多元文化主義”就和“多元化”一樣空洞。
如果說美國處在企圖修復1960年代激進行動對文化造成的破壞的道德反革命運動中是正確的話，那么，大學顯得不協調，不合拍。離婚率和私生子數量已經在下降，都市犯罪在規模上在下降，達到了幾十年前的水平，少年喝酒和吸毒在減少，文化活力的眾多其他標準都顯示情況在改善的跡象。所有這些都顯示1960年代控制大學的反律法主義（antinomianism）失去了往日的威風，中產階級理想的持久力量正在重新得到確認。
大學教授們對我們時代最重要的發展的觀點一直是錯的，大錯特錯了。在他們看來，正如棒球明星尤吉?貝拉（Yogi Berra）所說“未來不是從前的重復”。在很大程度上，科學之外的大學教授失去了理解和影響外來世界的能力。他們的地位越來越多地被私人研究中心和更接近現實的，更關注社會最新發展的獨立學者所取代。比如曼哈頓研究所（Manhattan Institute）美國企業研究所（American Enterprise Institute）胡佛研究所（Hoover Institution）等研究中心在最近幾十年來對公共政策領域的影響力超過所有大學的公共政策學院加在一起還大。眾多獨立的報刊比如《新批評》（New Criterion）《評論》（Commentary）《哈德遜評論》（Hudson Review）都從大學搶走了在藝術，人文和公共事務等方面的思想界領袖地位。當今最著名的歷史學家的著作都是非學術界人士如戴維?麥卡洛（David McCullough）和朗?切諾（Ron Chernow），連同他們的恩人理查德?吉爾德（Richard Gilder）和劉易斯?萊爾曼（Lewis Lehrman）在復興美國歷史研究方面比任何大學的歷史教授都大。學術界當今失去影響力是因為三十年前它把賭注押在了1960年的激進思想上了，顯然他們輸得精光。
而且，左派大學的失敗，連同其某些代表人物的過分行為，逐漸導致受托人和捐款者甚至校長和院系主任提出大學到底往哪里去的問題，這些問題早就該提出來了。比如，如果大學教授們用同一種方式思考，如果針對重大問題的真正的辯論被打壓，如果意識形態言論充斥思想的討論，如果學生對和平運動的了解比對憲法的了解還多，對美國科羅拉多大學種族研究系主任沃德?丘吉爾（Ward Churchill）的了解比對溫斯頓?丘吉爾（Winston Churchill）的了解還多，大學如何履行自己的責任？
20年前，當阿蘭?布魯姆（Allan Bloom）出版其暢銷書《美國思想的終結》（The Closing of the American Mind）時，他是少數幾個呼吁人們對左派大學產生的破壞性影響的人物之一。如今，有越來越多的倡議時不時在校園里出現不僅要診斷問題而且提出改進的辦法。確實，現在有幾十個組織推動校園里思想活動和思想多元化。
大學受托人開始打破人為的障礙，強調不僅大學教授有資格對課程改革和聘用教授發表意見。比如，今年早些時候，達特茅斯學院（Dartmouth College）校友選出了兩個候選人進入校董事會，他們在集會上呼吁思想多元化和校園的更高學術標準。科羅拉多大學的董事會對沃德?丘吉爾的可恥失敗以及對自己學校的學術標準的影響感到厭惡，進一步創建了新的本科生“西方文明”課程。紐約州立大學的受托人和弗吉尼亞州喬治?梅森大學（George Mason University）的受托人受到位于華盛頓的美國受托人與校友委員會（American Council of Trustees and Alumni）的鼓勵也推行了支持西方文明和美國歷史的學術標準。幾年前，紐約州立大學的受托人看到30年前激進思想控制的標準的垮臺受到震動，采取步驟加強了大學錄取的標準，為課程中注入了真實的內容。其他地方的受托人，受到這些例子的鼓勵，也發現如果他們的大學要得到拯救，就不敢依靠教授們做這些事情。
立法者和公共官員也在觀望是否要采取行動以便對公眾對大學走向的關注做出反應。因此，得到聯邦政府的支持的中東研究所的反對猶太人行為的擔心，國會現在正考慮立法加強對政府撥款的監督，而且如果發現單位有這類濫用的行為將剝奪這些機構的資金支持。對于類似擔心的反應，美國人權委員會最近宣布它要調查大學校園里的反猶太人丑聞。
與此同時，有些慈善家開始注意到校園中的反美主義，和其他病癥尤其是反猶主義，反伊斯蘭主義，種族隔離主義，和反企業的關系。看到這些罪惡的聯系，當然是對的，看到需要打擊左派大學豢養的廣泛的意識形態組成部分的這些罪惡也是對的。這樣的捐款者，一旦付諸行動，將帶來新的緊迫性挑戰從學術界驅逐這種正統做法。
最近一些年校園中最激動人心的發展或許是各種中心或者項目機構的建立，它們專門進行政治自由和自由機構的歷史的研究。比如關于美國理想研究的詹姆斯麥迪遜項目（James Madison Program）,杜克大學的格斯特項目（Gerst Program），克萊爾門特學院（Claremont McKenna College）的塞爾維托里中心（the Salvatori Center），布朗大學的政治理論項目組（Political Theory Project），科爾蓋特大學（Colgate）的自由和西方文明研究中心（the Center for Freedom and Western Civilization）等。這些項目都是從幾個捐款者的合作中發展起來的，這些校友擔心母校的左翼傾向，保守派或者溫和派教授擔心學習了很多關于種族和性別身份的知識，卻對自己的文明的思想基礎所知甚少。諸如此類的項目可能出現在每個重點大學的校園里，或者由私人捐款者創立，或者更好地通過學術界的捐贈累積起來后設立。
這些發展代表了挑戰左派大學的運動的最前沿。這些努力的目的不是要在大學里給予保守派的代表和其他利益團體同樣的立足之地。思想多元化，真理追求，尊重自由機構的遺產等既不是保守派的也不是左翼自由派的理想。杰斐遜明白這些理想是大學的核心價值，處于他的“文學家的共和國”的核心。洪堡特也認為自由派大學是推動自由原則，自由探索，不受妨礙地追求真理的手段。在大學校園里恢復這些理想的努力因而是保守派和自由派都應該鼓掌慶賀的好事。左派大學不應該被右派大學取而代之。而應該被獻身于自由的教育和高深的研究的真正的大學取而代之。
譯自：“The left University” by James Piereson
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19616
英文原文：
The Left University
By James Piereson
Weekly Standard | September 27, 2005
MORE THAN 16 MILLION STUDENTS are now enrolled in colleges and universities in the United States, the largest number ever. In two years, the figure will exceed 17 million, and it will continue to grow, as the high school graduating class of 2008 will be the largest in history. Today nearly 70 percent of the 18-to-24 age cohort attends college in one form or another, and more than 80 percent of high school graduates do so. College attendance has become a near universal rite of passage for youngsters in our society, and a requirement for entry into the world of middle-class employment.
When this year's freshmen enter the academic world, they will encounter a bizarre universe in which big-time athletics, business education, and rigorous science programs operate under the umbrella of institutions that define themselves in terms of left-wing ideology. This is especially true of the 100 or so elite public and private institutions that are able to select their students from among a multitude of applicants seeking entry, and true also of the humanities and social science departments that define the political and social meaning of the academic enterprise. These students will enter the world of what we may call the left university.
The ideology of the left university is both anti-American and anticapitalist. The left university, according to its self-understanding, is devoted to the exposure of the oppression of the various groups that have been the West's victims--women, blacks, Hispanics, gays, and others that have been officially designated as oppressed groups--and to those groups' representation. This is the so-called "diversity" ideology to which every academic dean, provost, and president must pledge obedience and devotion.
As it happens, the contemporary university is diverse only as a matter of definition and ideology, but not in practice or reality. A recent national survey of college faculty by Stanley Rothman, Robert Lichter, and Neil Nevitte showed that over 72 percent held liberal and left of center views, while some 15 percent held conservative views. The survey also found that, over time, and especially since 1980, academic opinion has moved steadily leftward as the generation shaped by the 1960s has taken control of academe. In the humanities and social sciences, where political views are more closely related to academic subject matter, the distribution of opinion is even more skewed to the left. Unlike professors in the past, moreover, many contemporary teachers believe it is their duty to incorporate their political views into classroom instruction. Thus students at leading colleges report that they are subjected to a steady drumbeat of political propaganda in their courses in the humanities and social sciences.
The same researchers found that 50 percent of college faculty were Democrats, while just 11 percent were Republicans, which should surprise no one since the diversity ideology that drives the university is the same one that defines the Democratic party. Other researchers have reported even more lopsided distributions. Daniel Klein, an economist at Santa Clara University, found in a national survey of professors that Democrats outnumber Republicans in social science and humanities departments by a ratio of 7 to 1. Meanwhile, college administrators and faculty continue to promote campaigns for cosmetic diversity even as their institutions are becoming more monolithic in the one area academics should care about most--that is, in the area of ideas.
This, then, is the left university. The university, moreover, has formed an informal political alliance with the other liberal and left-wing institutions in our society: Hollywood, public sector labor unions, large charitable foundations, the news media, and, of course, the Democratic party. All are driven by the same doctrine of diversity. These institutions have provided political protection and encouragement for the academy as it has moved steadily leftward.
But there are signs that suggest the days of the left university are numbered, and that the leftist establishment will soon find itself resisting a new tide of change and reform. To understand why this may be so, it will be useful first to look at the American university over a somewhat longer span of development.
II
FOR THE GREAT PART OF AMERICAN HISTORY, from the founding of Harvard College in 1636 down to around 1900, colleges and universities played a small role in the economic and political developments that shaped the nation. Through the colonial period and into the early 19th century, when state universities began to be formed, institutions of higher learning were built on a British model, and were founded or controlled by Protestant denominations, usually Congregational, Episcopal, or Presbyterian. The purpose of these institutions was to shape character and to transmit knowledge and right principles to the young in order to prepare them for vocations in teaching, the ministry, and, often, the law. Few thought of these institutions as places where new knowledge might be generated or where original research might be conducted. In England, as in America, research and discovery were sponsored by nonacademic institutions like the Royal Society in London or the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, the latter founded by Benjamin Franklin.
It is true that some of the prominent founders of the nation were greatly interested in the role academic institutions might play under the new government. Many of the leaders of the Revolution and authors of the Constitution had attended one or another of the nine colleges that then existed in the fledgling nation. Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, for example, had studied at Kings College (later Columbia) in New York City, Thomas Jefferson at William and Mary, and James Madison at the College of New Jersey (later Princeton). Franklin had earlier been a founder of the University of Pennsylvania. Jefferson and Madison, in particular, were first exposed during their college years to the ideals of liberty and limited government by studying the works of John Locke, Adam Smith, David Hume, and other leading figures of the British enlightenment. Here, during their college years, they absorbed the philosophy that they later used to shape the institutions of the new nation. But these men understood themselves not as academics or scholars, but rather as members of a "republic of letters," to use Jefferson's phrase. They were broadly learned in history and philosophy, and studied ancient languages and politics in order to apply the lessons of the past to the practical problems of the present.
Jefferson, however, perhaps because of his own academic experience, was much taken with the idea of a university that would prepare the young to enter such a "republic of letters," and to take their place as wise leaders of the real American republic. He understood, as did Madison, that the new republican order they had helped to establish required academic institutions that were more secular and philosophical and less religious and vocational than those existing at the time. During their presidencies, both Jefferson and Madison proposed the creation of a national university with precisely this aim, but such proposals went nowhere in Congress because many believed that the security of the republic was based more in the design of our institutions and the temper of the people than in the education of a class of leaders--a point that Madison himself had made during the debates over the Constitution. In his later years, therefore, Jefferson turned his energies to the creation of the University of Virginia, which he conceived as the prototype for a new "republican" university, one that would enroll the best students in his state and provide them with a secular education in the languages and history of Greece and Rome, the practical sciences, and the correct understanding of the Constitution. He lived to see his dream realized when he attended the inaugural banquet (along with Madison and Lafayette) in 1824, two years before he died.
But Jefferson's vision of a new university for a new republican polity was stillborn. The sharpening sectionalism of the nation from the 1830s onward, and its increasing preoccupation with slavery and expansion, undermined the Jeffersonian ideal of a "republic of letters" that transcended geography, personal backgrounds, and narrow interests. The emerging Jacksonian culture that celebrated equality and the common man, so well described by Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America, was likewise suspicious of an institution that appeared impractical and aristocratic. Andrew Jackson and his followers ridiculed the idea of a national university as undemocratic and an affront to the common man. Pioneer democracy, as it was called, was notoriously suspicious of expert wisdom. Thus, as new colleges were established in this era, most were guided by vocational objectives rather than by Jeffersonian ideals.
During most of the 19th century, therefore, academic institutions operated at some distance from the swirling economic and political events that were transforming the nation. They had little to do, for example, with the Protestant revivals of the 1820s and 1830s, with Jacksonianism or the abolitionist movement, with the emergence of the Republican party, with secession in the South, with the rise of industry after the Civil War, or, even, with major intellectual movements such as Transcendentalism. The great entrepreneurs of the era, such as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, or George Pullman, were self-made men with little or no academic experience. Two of the most important presidents of the century--Jackson and Lincoln--had little formal schooling at all. Colleges hosted no activities, such as athletic contests or celebrity speeches, that would have brought them to the attention of the wider public. Their exclusive focus on teaching meant that their influence could not reach beyond local circles, and also that there could not develop any center or hierarchy to the academic enterprise. At the close of the Civil War, therefore, academic institutions had but a marginal place in American life.
III
LAURENCE VEYSEY, in The Emergence of the American University, describes how the modern academic enterprise took shape between the years 1870 and 1910. During this period of reform and invention, colleges and universities began to break their ties to religious bodies, embraced the secular principles of science, progress, and democracy, and adopted the practices of research and academic freedom that define higher education to the present day.
The modern structure of the university, with its division into departments and colleges supervised by a class of administrators, was laid out in these years. It was also during this period that two great innovations--the graduate school and the elective system--were incorporated into the academic enterprise. This was the first of two academic revolutions that created the universities we know today, and which propelled academic institutions into the prominent place they hold in contemporary life.
There occurred a rapid expansion in higher education in the last few decades of the 19th century, encouraged by the end of sectional hostilities, the closing of the frontier, the rise of science and industry, and the accumulation of great wealth in the hands of men prepared to direct some of it to new academic institutions. From the close of the Civil War to 1890, the number of colleges and universities in the United States doubled from about 500 to 1,000, and the number of students tripled to more than 150,000. By 1910, student enrollment had grown to 350,000. Many of our most influential universities were created during this time, including the University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, Vanderbilt, and Clark--all underwritten financially by wealthy businessmen. The academic revolution of this era was directed and largely implemented by university presidents including Charles Eliot of Harvard, Daniel Coit Gilman of Johns Hopkins, Andrew White of Cornell, William Rainey Harper of Chicago, David Starr Jordan of Stanford--and Woodrow Wilson of Princeton. It was a measure of the esteem in which college presidents were held that Wilson, while president of Princeton, was recruited in 1910 to run for governor of New Jersey and two years later for president of the United States.
The intellectual inspiration and institutional model for this revolution came not from Jefferson and the University of Virginia, or from any American source at all, but from German idealists who brought about an academic revolution in that country in the early 1800s. The institutional model was the University of Berlin, established in 1810 by Wilhelm von Humboldt, Prussian minister of education, under the influence of the idealist philosophers Fichte, Kant, and Hegel, who asserted that the task of the scholar was to search for the truth in science, philosophy, and morals unimpeded by political or religious authorities. The University of Berlin, the original research university, was based on the idea that truth is not something known and passed on, but the subject of persistent inquiry and continuous revision. It incorporated the practice of faculty autonomy in the selection of subjects for research and coursework, and conceived of students as junior partners in the research enterprise, that is, as researchers or professors in training. This new institution thus recast the purpose of the university away from theology, tradition, and vocations and in the direction of science and secular studies. It discarded as well the practice of looking to ancient writers for moral lessons and political guidance. The new university thus placed the faculty rather than students, religious bodies, or public officials at the center of the enterprise, for it was the faculty that in the end would decide what was studied and taught.
The model of the German research university spread rapidly in the United States in the decades after the Civil War, inaugurated by the founding of Johns Hopkins University in 1876 as our first institution organized around graduate research studies. The late scholar Edward Shils referred to this as "the most decisive single event in the history of learning in the Western hemisphere." This innovation, as Shils pointed out, put pressure on other institutions to establish their own programs of research and graduate study. Harvard soon created its own Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in order to keep pace with Johns Hopkins. Stanford University was established in 1891 along similar lines, which induced the University of California to follow suit. The University of Chicago, underwritten by John D. Rockefeller, was established in 1892 with research as the basis for faculty appointment and promotion. Other institutions in the Midwest, especially Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois, were then in the process of embracing the research model. Here, then, in the wake of the Hopkins innovation, occurred the first important competition among universities for rank and reputation; and here, through this competition, the modern American university was born.
Shils was certainly correct to emphasize the far-reaching consequences that followed in the United States from the adoption of the German university model. In the United States, as in Germany, the research model transformed the status of the professor from a teacher to an independent scholar and researcher. Professors would no longer pass along established truths and traditional moral ideals, but would subject these truths and ideals to scrutiny in the search for new knowledge. The faculty, as the new priesthood of the research enterprise, would shortly claim authority to decide all matters dealing with curriculum, new faculty appointments, and promotions. The modern doctrine of academic freedom, which gives professors wide latitude to teach and conduct research as they wish, also followed in due course as a consequence of these premises. Much as Oliver Wendell Holmes said that the law is what the judges say it is, the reformed university would henceforth be whatever the faculty decides it is.
As the modern university took shape, faculties began to organize themselves into specialized departments, or disciplines, with their own formal rules for study, research, and publication. It was in this period that the various academic associations were formed, including the American Historical Association (1884), the American Economic Association (1885), the American Physical Society (1899), the American Political Science Association (1903), and the American Sociological Association (1905). These were national membership associations that held annual conventions and published their own journals containing research studies representing authoritative work in the respective disciplines. These associations were, in a way, national communities that reoriented the attention of professors away from students at their own college and toward colleagues working in the same discipline at other institutions across the country. The status of professors in their various disciplines was based on their published research, which established in turn a new basis upon which to rank departments and entire institutions.
The emergence of the modern university thus created a new class of professional intellectuals--that is, men (and a few women) who worked with ideas for a living. Until this time, intellectual life in America, such as it was, was dominated by ministers and patricians (the Founding Fathers), and then in the 19th century by independent writers who generated income by publishing books and articles. Now for the first time, university professors such as Charles Beard and John Dewey became famous for the books and articles they published. Perhaps it is true, as has been said, that classes of people with a common interest eventually begin to think more or less alike. Certainly this has been true of the professional intellectuals who have populated the American university.
IV
HUMBOLDT, and Kant as well, were continental liberals in the old sense of that term, sympathetic to liberty and reason and to the Enlightenment critique of religion, theology, and tradition. It is in this sense that we can refer to their academic innovation as a "liberal" university, as it was based on reason, science, free inquiry, and the pursuit of new knowledge.
The new university, devoted to creating new knowledge and questioning old truths, was bound to form a frictional relationship with an American polity that was also liberal but shaped by a different and somewhat conflicting intellectual tradition. The American Revolution and Constitution were grounded in the writings of Scottish and English thinkers of the 18th century, but the modern university was shaped more by continental ideas arising out of Germany and France. Harvard historian Morton White wrote in Social Thought in America: The Revolt Against Formalism that many of the intellectual leaders of the university revolution were sharp critics of the Scottish Enlightenment and the tradition of British empiricism. These figures--Dewey in philosophy, Thorstein Veblen in economics, Charles Beard and James Harvey Robinson in history, Holmes in law--asserted that the philosophical ideas of the British Enlightenment were too abstract, were not grounded in experience, and could not address the concrete problems of modern life. Many, especially Dewey and Robinson, arrived at these judgments through exposure to the German school of historical thought originating with Hegel, which emphasized culture and historical evolution as the keys to understanding society and politics.
It was from this standpoint that Veblen and other economists rejected Adam Smith and classical political economy, that Dewey attacked David Hume, that Beard and Robinson criticized traditional narrative historians who failed to connect the past to the problems of the present, and that Holmes attacked legal theorists who thought that the words of the Constitution answered all questions about the law. These thinkers were not only academics, but products of the new university: Dewey and Veblen had studied together as graduate students (along with Woodrow Wilson) at Johns Hopkins, and Robinson earned a doctorate in history in Germany at the University of Freiburg. All save for Holmes, who was not an academic, concluded that the Constitution, and the philosophy behind it, was inadequate to the challenges of modern life. This led them to search for new intellectual foundations for politics, history, economics, law, and (in Dewey's case) education.
It was through these theories that the modern university laid the intellectual groundwork for political Progressivism and the reorientation of liberal doctrine in the direction of state regulation and reliance on nonpartisan experts. In many circumstances, universities provided more than just philosophical and theoretical ammunition. The first large-scale experiment with progressive policies occurred in the early 1890s, when the University of Wisconsin offered its research services to the governor and legislature of the state. The "Wisconsin idea," as it came to be called, and which served as a model for other institutions to emulate, envisioned a partnership under which the university would provide information, statistics, and technical expertise to the state so that effective and intelligent legislation might be enacted. More than this, as the historian Frederick Jackson Turner argued, the university would train experts who might serve as judges and commissioners who could mediate in disinterested ways between contending economic interests--for example, between business and labor. Though the university was meant to serve a nonpartisan role, the underlying objective of the enterprise was to bring big business to heel through legislation and regulation, which was understood soon enough by business leaders in the state. This nonpartisan aspiration was genuine, however, since the Progressive agenda had not yet found a home in either political party, and would not do so until the 1930s, when progressives settled for good into Franklin D. Roosevelt's Democratic party.
The Wisconsin idea brought out into the open a new role for the university, which was to bring experts and expert knowledge into the political process. This was one of the clearest links between the emerging university and the progressive movement, since the university was the logical source for the experts needed to design and implement progressive policies. As time passed, more and more universities established research centers on the Wisconsin model, which eventually led to the creation of public policy schools and an entire profession of academic public policy experts. This development in turn led to a new disjunction in American political life. For the 80 or so years from the formation of the union to the close of the Civil War, the theorists who designed institutions and policies were one and the same with the political leaders who put them into place. This was true of Madison, Jefferson, and Hamilton, and also of subsequent figures, such as Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, and Abraham Lincoln. With the rise of the university, political theories and programs were increasingly devised by academics, like Dewey, Beard, or the Wisconsin professors, who operated outside the arena of electoral politics and whose experience was of a far different kind. The reliance on experts introduced into liberal ranks a permanent ambivalence regarding representative government and the common man--for while the experts purported to act in the name of the people, they also understood that it was a grave risk actually to seek their consent or approval.
It was not coincidental that the modern university emerged at precisely the same time that the modern liberal movement was in the process of defining itself. One might go further to say that for 140 years, from the close of the Civil War to the present day, the fortunes of liberalism in America have been intertwined with those of the university, and that important changes in the one have been accompanied by parallel and consistent changes in the other. Looking back over this period, therefore, it appears that liberalism as we knew it in the 20th century originated with the emergence of the modern university.
V
DURING THE FOLLOWING FIFTY or so years, from 1910 into the 1960s, the American academic system continued to evolve according to patterns that were established during this formative generation. The research university, supported heavily by public funds, expanded exponentially. The gulf grew between research universities and the smaller liberal arts college. Faculty governance was institutionalized. The elective system was applied more or less universally, leading to debates about the "core" curriculum and concerns that specialization and the emphasis on expert knowledge had gone too far. A college degree was viewed by students and parents alike as a key requirement for professional employment and upward mobility. By the 1960s, public officials and academic leaders were nearly unanimous in the view that a college education should be made available to all.
From the 1920s through the 1950s, many leading institutions, Columbia and Harvard prominent among them, made sustained efforts to leaven the new emphasis on specialization and expertise with broader curricula in the arts, humanities, and social sciences--as these fields came to be called when the universities turned in a secular direction. Jefferson's ideals regarding his "republic of letters" were thus not completely abandoned in the modern university. Columbia established its widely emulated courses in "contemporary civilization" in the 1920s in an effort to expose students to the great literature of Western civilization dating back to the ancient Greeks, and to give them (in the wake of the world war) a more general understanding of how modern institutions came into being. Following World War II, the Harvard faculty sought to combat specialization with its core curriculum in General Education, which included broad courses in science, history, literature, and American democracy. These thoughtful innovations provided a counterweight of sorts to the progressive emphases on expertise and political reform; moreover, they provided intellectual weight to the academic enterprise itself by linking it to the American past and to the civilization out of which the nation and the university evolved.
By 1965, the American university was probably at a high point in terms of public esteem. Academic scientists had played a leading role in the discoveries that had led to victory in World War II. Veterans returning from the war enrolled in colleges and universities in large numbers, contributing a sense of maturity and seriousness to the academic enterprise that it had lacked before (and has lacked since). Professors in all fields, including the arts and humanities, enjoyed wide prestige. College sports reached large audiences through national television broadcasts. The baby boom generation, the largest in the history of the nation, was about to enter university life, causing a more than doubling of enrollments (from 3.5 million to 8 million) between 1960 and 1970.
It is plain in retrospect that the American university changed as fundamentally in the decade or so after 1965 as it did in those formative years between 1870 and 1910. The political and cultural upheavals of the period, spurred by the civil rights movement and opposition to the war in Vietnam, combined with the demographic explosion, brought about a second revolution in higher education, and created an institution (speaking generally) that was more egalitarian, more ideological, and more politicized, but less academic and less rigorous, in its preoccupations than was the case in the preceding era. It was in this period, from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, that the left university emerged in place of the liberal university.
VI
THE MAJOR CHANGES or reversals that took place in a short period of time were unprecedented in the history of American education: single-sex colleges all but disappeared; college regulation of student morals disappeared as well; government regulation of employment expanded, putting pressure on institutions to hire women and minorities for faculty positions; the line between teaching a subject matter and advocating political positions was blurred or even eliminated altogether as the new campus radicalism asserted that all teaching is political in nature; the liberal underpinnings of academic culture--the freedom to teach and conduct research--were attacked and eroded in the name of political correctness; the unifying character of the humanities was subverted and discredited when they were said to represent an oppressive tradition formed by white European males; new fields, usually with ideological preconceptions, were created outside the traditional departments and areas of study, thus expanding the positions available for radical faculty; serious academic requirements, including foreign language proficiency, were softened or eliminated. Faculty opinion, already skewed in a liberal direction in the 1950s and 1960s, moved decisively to the left. All of these changes were blasted into place in the tumultuous decade from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, and were institutionalized in the decades that followed.
In many important ways, the left university reversed or modified the assumptions and practices of the liberal university. The architects of the liberal university were optimistic about the prospects for the nation, and looked ahead to the progressive advancement of democracy and liberty, but the leaders of the left university are dour and pessimistic and view our history as a tale of oppression. The liberal academics believed in progress through the application of reason and knowledge, but the academic left asserted that reason and knowledge were masks for corporate or conservative interests. Yet, while the old liberals carved out a role in politics for experts and expert knowledge, the left disdained expertise and embraced the doctrine of diversity, which is based on the naked assertion of group interests. The liberals believed in academic freedom for all, but the academic leftists support academic freedom only for themselves, not for conservative or moderate faculty, not for speakers who disagree with them, and not for students who wish to learn from a nonideological standpoint. The liberals of a century ago took over the university with an intellectual vision grounded in 19th-century philosophy, while the radicals of our time seized control through politics and political pressure by organizing demonstrations and protests and by shrewdly leveraging assistance from governmental regulatory bodies.
There was, in addition, a powerful countercultural element in the left university that was never a significant dimension of the liberal university. While liberals had pressed for practical reforms in American capitalism and the Constitution, the radicals of the 1960s went further to launch a wholesale attack on American culture and the middle-class way of life, which they condemned as repressive and, worse, boring. The cultural radicalism of the 1960s, derived from the Beats of the 1950s, was so appealing to the new campus left because it promised something beyond political reform--namely, a different way of life with a revised set of morals, new styles of dress, and an alternative to conventional careers. The cultural radicalism of the Beats was thus imported more or less wholesale to the campus, which was in turn conceived as a sanctuary from the moral repression of middle class life, a place where any number of different lifestyles might be explored. In the past, Americans in search of bohemia, or a refuge from middle-class expectations, had fled to communes in the country, or to European outposts as Hemingway and other writers did in the 1920s, or to Greenwich Village or San Francisco, but now they found homes on the modern campus.
There were some obvious weaknesses in the liberal university that the radicals were able to exploit in executing their takeover. The leaders who built the liberal university a century ago erected a set of effective defenses against attacks coming from the outside world--from conservative businessmen, trustees, and donors who disagreed with the political views of professors or from legislators or politicians who sought to punish universities for the unconventional views of some faculty. As things turned out, the protections of academic freedom were much less effective in dealing with internal attacks from organized students and left-wing faculty who disrupted classes, picketed faculty homes and offices, took over administration buildings, issued threats to faculty and administrators, and generally used the tactics of street politics to take over the university.
The liberals never anticipated a revolt from within their own family, and did not know how to respond to it without betraying cherished beliefs about rational discourse and authority legitimized by achievement. The liberals, moreover, invited the contempt of the radicals by erecting a comprehensive critique of American capitalism and the Constitution, based on theories developed from the Progressive Era forward through the 1950s, but then by failing to accomplish anything significant in the way of real change--a failure that made them appear ineffective and weak. So liberalism was wide open to the assault from the left, and within a few years, liberalism--and the university--had been recast as a doctrine of identity politics, group rights, and diversity. It also happened that liberalism was quickly discredited in the eyes of most Americans when it associated itself with these ideas, and that the Democratic party declined into minority status once it had embraced them. Such consequences reveal something instructive about the doctrines that took over the American university.
VII
SO THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY went through two major revolutions in the past century, the first driven by ideas of progressive reform, and the second by radical preoccupations with cultural change. The first revolution created the liberal university and the second the left university. Both were far-reaching in the sense that they contributed to a reformulation of liberal or leftist doctrine and were thereby linked to broader movements for political reform. The left university has now been in place for more than a generation. Are there signs that another revolution is in the offing, one that will move the academy in a more constructive direction?
Consider, for example, the important developments of the past generation that academics in thrall to left-wing doctrines did not foresee and do not understand. There was, first of all, the fall of communism and the Soviet Union, both of which were said by academic experts to be in good shape until the very day they collapsed. There followed equally anomalous events as first socialism and then the welfare state were discredited at the same time that the market revolution gained force in Central Europe and Asia. The emergence of the United States as the world's sole superpower confounded international relations experts who were convinced that a multipolar world was in the making or, alternatively, that the Communist and capitalist systems would eventually converge at some point close to the Swedish welfare state. The passionate interest around the world in liberty as conceived by Locke, Adam Smith, and the American Founders is perhaps the most puzzling development to the left academics because they have so little sympathy with it. In the domestic policy arena, academic experts claimed for thirty years that welfare programs were in no way implicated in urban poverty, crime, family breakup, and teen pregnancy--ideological views that were discredited by the success of the welfare reforms of the 1990s. Nor could academics, committed as they are to secular doctrines, foresee or understand the recent rise of fundamentalist religion around the world. Step by step, the outside world is systematically debunking the ideological prejudices of the left academy.
But the above is just the beginning of an extended catalog of errors, illusions, and misconceptions. For a generation now, universities have promoted research and coursework in something called "multiculturalism," a doctrine that purports to encourage study of foreign societies and cultures. After the terrorist attacks in 2001, however, we quickly learned that the nation had trained few specialists who understood the Arabic language or Islamic cultures and who might help us understand and counter this new threat. It turned out that multiculturalism was not at all about studying foreign cultures and languages, since this requires real effort, but rather about mobilizing various national groups to exert political influence within the United States. In terms of content, "multiculturalism" was every bit as hollow as "diversity."
And if it is true that the United States is in the midst of a moral counterrevolution that seeks to repair much of the cultural damage done by the excesses of the 1960s, then here, too, the universities are out of step. Rates of divorce and illegitimate birth are declining, urban crime is down from the epidemic levels it reached a few decades ago, teen drinking and drug use are declining, and various other measures of cultural vitality are showing signs of similar improvement. All of this suggests a rejection of the kind of antinomianism that took over the academy in the 1960s, and a reassertion of the enduring strength of middle-class ideals.
The academics have thus been wrong--and far wrong--about the most important developments of our time. From their point of view, as Yogi Berra said, "the future is not what it used to be." To a great degree, university faculties outside the sciences have lost the capacity either to understand or to influence the outside world. Their place is increasingly being taken by private research centers and independent scholars in closer touch and in greater sympathy with these new developments. Centers like the Manhattan Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Hoover Institution have had far more influence in the public policy arena in recent decades than all the academic public policy schools combined. Various independent magazines and journals, such as the New Criterion, Commentary, and the Hudson Review, have seized intellectual leadership from the academy in the arts, humanities, and public affairs. The most prominent historians writing today are nonacademics like David McCullough and Ron Chernow, who, along with benefactors like Richard Gilder and Lewis Lehrman, have done far more than any academic historian to revive the study of American history. The academy is losing influence today because a generation ago it placed a wager on the radical ideas of the 1960s--a wager that it has now lost.
Furthermore, the failures of the left university, along with the excesses of some of its representatives, are gradually leading trustees and donors, and even some presidents and deans, to ask some long overdue questions about the path their institutions have followed. How, for example, can any university carry out its responsibilities if all faculty members think the same way, if genuine debate over vital questions is discouraged, if ideological rhetoric crowds out thoughtful discussion, if students know more about the peace movement than the Constitution and more about Ward Churchill than Winston Churchill?
Two decades ago, when Allan Bloom published his bestselling book The Closing of the American Mind, his was one of the few articulate voices calling attention to the destructive assumptions of the left university. Today, by contrast, there are numerous initiatives on and off the campus that not only diagnose the problem but also point to practical remedies. Indeed, there are now dozens of organizations promoting intellectual rigor and pluralism on the campus.
College and university trustees are beginning to break through the artificial barrier that says that only faculty are qualified to pass judgment on matters of curriculum and appointments. Earlier this year, for example, the alumni of Dartmouth College elected to its board of trustees two insurgent candidates who ran on a platform that called for intellectual diversity and higher academic standards on the campus. Trustees of the University of Colorado, disgusted by the Ward Churchill fiasco and what it implied about the intellectual standards at their institution, have gone further by creating a new undergraduate program in Western civilization. Trustees at the State University of New York and George Mason University in Virginia, encouraged by the Washington-based American Council of Trustees and Alumni, have also acted to bolster academic standards in Western civilization and American history. Several years ago the trustees of the City University of New York, alarmed by the collapse of standards that followed a radical takeover a generation ago, took steps to strengthen standards for admission and to incorporate real substance into the curriculum. Trustees elsewhere, encouraged by such examples, are discovering that, if their institutions are to be rescued, they dare not rely on faculties to do it.
Legislators and public officials are also taking a look at possible actions in response to growing concerns about trends on campus. Thus, in response to concerns that anti-Semitic acts on campus have been fueled by Middle Eastern Studies programs receiving federal support, Congress is now considering legislation to strengthen oversight of such grants--and to strip institutions of support where such abuses are found. And, responding to similar concerns, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights recently announced that it will look into the scandal of campus anti-Semitism.
At the same time, some philanthropists have begun to see a connection between anti-Americanism on campus and other pathologies, particularly anti-Semitism, anti-Israelism, racial separatism, and hostility to business. They are surely right to see a connection among these malignancies, and right also to see that they need to be attacked as strands of a broad ideology that has found a home in the left university. Such donors, once they are in the field, will bring a new urgency to the challenge of dislodging this orthodoxy from the academy.
Perhaps the most promising development on campus in recent years has been the creation of various centers and programs dedicated to the study of political liberty and the history of free institutions--for example, the James Madison Program on American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton, the Gerst Program at Duke, the Salvatori Center at Claremont McKenna College, the Political Theory Project at Brown, and the Center for Freedom and Western Civilization at Colgate. Such programs have grown out of a collaboration between a handful of donors, often alumni concerned about left-wing trends at their institutions, and conservative and moderate professors concerned that students are learning a great deal about racial and gender identity, but little about the intellectual foundations of their civilization. Exemplary programs like these could come to exist on every major college and university campus, funded either by private donors or, better yet, out of the vast sums that have accumulated in academic endowments.
These developments represent just the leading edge of a growing movement to challenge the practices of the left university. The purpose of such efforts is not to give representation to conservatives on an equal footing with other campus interest groups. Intellectual pluralism, the search for truth, and respect for the heritage of free institutions are neither conservative nor left-liberal ideals. Jefferson, indeed, understood these ideals to be at the heart of the university, and central to his vision of a "republic of letters"; Humboldt, too, saw his liberal university as the means of carrying forward the principles of liberty, free inquiry, and the unimpeded search for truth. The effort to restore these ideals on campus is thus something that both conservatives and liberals should applaud. The left university should not be replaced by the right university. It should be replaced by the real university, dedicated to liberal education and higher learning.
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