左派大学
The Left University
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詹姆斯·皮尔森/著 吴万伟/译
一、
如今美国大学有超过一千六百万的学生，是历史上人数最多的时期。再过两年这个数字将超过一千七百万，而且会继续增长，因为2008年的高中毕业生是历史上人数最多的。现在18到24岁的年轻人中将近70%的在上大学，高中毕业生中的80%以上要上大学。上大学几乎成为我们社会年轻人必须度过的人生阶段，成为找到中产阶级工作的必要条件。
今年的新生进入大学校园后，会看到一个奇特的世界，里面有赫赫有名的运动专业、工商管理专业、大型科学研究所等用左翼意识形态术语确定自身定位的种种机构。这种情况在100所左右不管是公立还是私立的名牌大学里尤其明显，它们都是能够从众多申请者中挑选优秀学生的单位。对于人文科学和社会科学院系也是如此，它们认定学术机构的政治和社会功能。这些学生进入了我们可以称为“左派大学”的世界。
左派大学的意识形态是反对美国，反对资本主义的。按照我的理解，左派大学主要是为长期以来遭受西方压迫的受害者群体---女人，黑人，墨西哥人，同性恋者，以及其他被官方认定的受压迫者群体争取平等权利，为这些人代言。这就是每个大学系主任，教务长，校长都必须发誓遵从和忠诚的所谓的“多样化”意识形态。
其实，当代大学的多元化只是表现在定义和意识形态上，不是在实践和现实生活中。斯坦利?罗思曼（Stanley Rothman）,罗伯特?林奇特（Robert Lichter）,尼尔?内维特（Neil Nevitte）最近对大学教师的全国性调查显示超过72%的人拥有自由主义或者左派的核心观点，而只有15%的人拥有保守派观点。该调查还发现特别是1980年以来，学术界的舆论稳定地往左派方向移动，因为受60年代思潮影响的人开始控制学术界的大权。在政治观点与学术问题密切相关的人文和社会科学领域，观点的分布更是向左派倾斜。和从前的教授不同，现在的许多老师相信自己有责任在课堂教学中宣传政治观点。因此名牌大学的学生报告说他们在人文社会科学课程学习中不断受到政治宣传的轰炸。
该研究者还发现大学教师中民主党员占总数的一半，而共和党员的比例只有11%。没有人会感到吃惊，因为推动大学的元化意识形态正是民主党的核心观念。其他研究者也发现更加倾斜的分布比例。圣克拉拉大学（Santa Clara）经济学家丹尼尔?克莱恩（Daniel Klein）在对全国教授的调查发现在人文社科领域民主党教授和共和党教授的比例是7：1。与此同时，大学管理者和学院继续推动多元化运动，虽然大学已经在教授们最应该关心的思想领域严重地一元化了。
这就是左派大学。它们已经与美国社会上的其他自由派团体、左翼机构如好莱坞，工会组织，大型慈善基金会，新闻媒体，当然还有民主党结为非正式的政治同盟。所有这些机构都信奉多元化的意识形态，为学术界在不断左倾的进程中提供政治保护和鼓励。
但是有迹象表明左派大学的日子屈指可数了。左派意识形态很快就要遭遇新一波的变化和改革。为了弄清楚为什么会出现这种变化，我们有必要先了解一下美国大学比较长的发展历史。
二、
在美国历史从1636年哈佛学院成立到1900年左右相当长的时期内，大学在改变美国经济和政治发展中扮演的角色一直很微小。在整个殖民地时期和公立大学成立的19世纪初期，高等教育机构基本上是按英国模式建立起来的，由新教教派如公理会，圣公会，或者长老会创立或控制。这些机构的目的是培养性格，给年轻人传授知识和正确的原则以便他们能从事教学，传教，或者法律等工作。很少人会认为这些地方是产生新知识或者进行创造性实验研究的所在。英国和美国一样，研究和科学发现是由非学术性机构资助的，比如位于伦敦的皇家学会（Royal Society），或者位于费城的美国哲学学会（American Philosophical Society）（由富兰克林（Benjamin Franklin）创立）。
美国缔造者中确实有些人对学术机构在新政府中充当的作用非常感兴趣，但是美国革命的领导人和宪法起草者中有很多在新生国家成立之前就存在的9所大学里上大学。比如汉密尔顿（Alexander Hamilton）和约翰?杰伊（John Jay）曾在国王学院（后来的纽约哥伦比亚大学）学习，杰斐逊（Thomas Jefferson）在威廉和玛丽学院（William and Mary）上学，麦迪逊（James Madison）在新泽西学院（后来的普林斯顿）学习，富兰克林曾是宾夕法尼亚大学的创始人。尤其是杰斐逊和麦迪逊在上大学期间接触到自由的理想和限制性的政府，研究了约翰?洛克（John Locke），亚当?斯密（Adam Smith）和大卫?休谟（David Hume）以及其他英国启蒙运动的杰出人物的著作。在大学时代，他们陶醉在哲学研究里，后来把这些思想作为新国家的纲领。但是这些人明白他们不是作为学者或者大学教授而是作为“文学家的共和国”（republic of letters）的成员（杰斐逊的话）。他们在历史和哲学方面造诣很深，学习古典语言和政治为的是使用过去的经验解决现实存在的实际问题。
杰斐逊或许因为自己的学术经验，对大学应该培养年轻人进入“文学家共和国”，成为真正共和国的聪明领导人的观点不以为然。就像麦迪逊一样，他明白他们帮助建立的新共和国的秩序要求学术机构比已经存在的大学更多世俗和哲学观点，更少宗教和职业色彩。在他们当总统期间，都建议按照这个目标成立公立大学，但是这些建议在国会里得不到赞同，因为很多议员相信共和国的安全建立在国家机构的设计上而不是培养领导阶层的人的脾性上。麦迪逊本人在宪法辩论的时候就提出的观点。因此，杰斐逊的晚年把主要精力转向创立弗吉尼亚大学，他认为这是共和国新型大学的原型，要招收该州最优秀的学生，为他们提供用希腊罗马语言和历史讲授的世俗教育，实际科学，和对宪法的正确理解。他活着看到了愿望的实现，1824年参加了大学的成立庆典（和麦迪逊和拉斐德（Lafayette）一起），两年后他就去世了。
但是杰斐逊对新共和国政治培养人才的新大学视野夭折了。美国从1830年开始日益严重的地方主义以及对奴隶制和西部扩张的痴迷破坏了杰斐逊超越地理，个人背景和狭隘利益的文学家共和国的理想。托克维尔（Alexis de Tocqueville）在《美国的民主》（Democracy in America）中描述的赞美平等和普通人的新兴杰克逊文化，对不切实际和贵族化倾向的机构表现出怀疑和不安。安德鲁?杰克逊（Andrew Jackson）和他的支持者嘲笑公立大学缺乏民主，是对普通人的公开侮辱。曾经被称为“拓荒者民主”（Pioneer democracy）明目张胆地怀疑专家的智慧。这个时期建立的新大学多数都是根据职业目标而不是杰斐逊理想指导下成立的。
因此，在19世纪的大部分时间里，学术机构的运行和改变美国面貌的重大经济和政治事件没有什么联系。大学对于1820年代和1830年代新教的复兴，杰克逊主义的崛起，废奴运动的蓬勃发展，共和党的出现，南方的脱离联邦，内战后工业的崛起，甚至像超验主义思想运动等都无可奈何。那个时代的大企业家比如卡耐基（Andrew Carnegie）洛克菲勒（John D. Rockefeller）或者乔治?普尔曼（George Pullman）都是很少或者根本没有大学经验的白手起家者。那个世纪最重要的两位总统杰克逊和林肯连正规的教育都很少。大学没有举行什么活动比如运动比赛，或者名人演讲，无法成为公众注目的中心。大学专注于教学意味着其影响力没有超越本地圈子，也意味着大学内部不可能形成学术企业中心或等级结构。因此，在内战将近结束的时候，大学在美国生活中仍然处于边缘的位置。
三、
劳伦斯?维希（LAURENCE VEYSEY）在《美国大学的崛起》（The Emergence of the American University）中描述了现代大学形成于1870年到1910年。在这个阶段的改革和创新中，大学开始打破以前与宗教团体的联系，拥抱世俗的原则包括科学，进步，民主等，采用了确定高等教育到如今的研究规范和学术自由等。
大学的现代结构，即分成由一帮管理者掌握的几个系和学院是在这个阶段制订下来的。也是在这个阶段，两大重要的改革---研究生院和选修课制度---被引进大学体制中。这是首批学术革命，创立了当今时代的大学，促使学术机构进入他们在当今生活中占据的优越地位。
在19世纪的最后几十年里，由于受到地方派系冲突消失，拓荒者临近终结，科学和产业的兴起，以及愿意把手里积蓄的巨额财富兴办教育的富豪的鼓励等，高等教育迅速发展。从内战结束到1890年，美国的大学数量从500所一下子翻了一番达到1000所，学生数量翻了两番超过了15万人。到1910年的时候，大学在校学生人数已经达到35万人。我们当今许多最有影响力的大学都是在这个时期创立的，包括芝加哥大学，约翰霍普金斯大学，斯坦福大学，范德比尔特大学（Vanderbilt）和克拉克大学（Clark）都是由富豪商人经济上的支持的。这个时期的学术革命主要是由大学校长指导和推行的，这些人包括哈佛校长查尔斯?艾略特（Charles Eliot）,霍普金斯校长丹尼尔?吉尔曼（Daniel Coit Gilman）,康乃尔校长安德鲁?怀特（Andrew White）,芝加哥大学校长威廉?雷尼?哈伯尔（William Rainey Harper）,斯坦福校长大卫?斯塔尔?乔丹（David Starr Jordan）和普林斯顿校长伍德罗?威尔逊（Woodrow Wilson）。可以想见大学校长的声望多么大，普林斯顿校长威尔逊在1910年参加竞选新泽西州州长，两年后当选美国总统。
这次革命的智慧灵感和机构模式并不是来自杰斐逊或者弗吉尼亚大学，或者任何别的美国源头。而是来自18世纪初期给德国学术界产生革命变化的理想主义者。大学模式来自1810年普鲁士教育部长洪堡特（Wilhelm von Humboldt）创立的柏林大学，他受到理想主义哲学家费希特（Fichte）康德（Kant）黑格尔（Hegel）的影响，这些人认为学者的任务是寻求不受政治和宗教当局约束的科学、哲学和道德上的真理。最开始是研究机构的柏林大学就是建立在这样的信念上：真理不是已知的，传授下来的东西，而是不断探索和不断修正的内容。它纳入了大学教授选择研究内容和担任课程的自主性做法，把学生看作科学研究领域中的初级合伙者，也就是说在接受培训的研究者和教授。这种新的机构把大学的目的从神学，传统，和职业教育引向科学和世俗研究的方向。同时大学也抛弃了转向古典作家寻求道德教育和政治指导的做法。新大学因而把教授而不是学生，宗教团体或者公共官员置于机构的核心地位，因为是教授最终决定研究什么，讲授什么。
德国研究型大学的模式在美国内战后的及时年里迅速推行开来，1876年霍普金斯大学成立，作为第一个主要从事研究生教育的机构。已经去世的学者爱德华?希尔斯（Edward Shils）把这称为“西半球学术历史上最具有决定性意义的一个事件。”希尔斯指出这个创新给其他院校施加了压力也必须建立自己的研究机构和研究生院。哈佛很快就成立的自己的艺术和科学研究生院，以便跟上霍普金斯。斯坦福大学是按照类似的原则1891年成立的，紧跟着加州大学成立。洛克菲勒资助成立的芝加哥大学成立于1892年，大学老师的选聘和晋升主要根据科研成果。中西部的大学尤其是密执安，威斯康星，伊利诺斯等都在拥抱研究型大学模式。就是在这里霍普金斯的改革，出现了大学之间竞争地位和名声的重要领域，通过这种竞争，美国的现代大学诞生了。
希尔斯强调美国采用德国大学模式产生的深远影响当然是正确的。在美国，就像在德国一样，研究模式让教授的地位从教师转变为独立的学者和研究者。教授不再传授普遍接受的真理和传统的道德理想，而是在追求新知识的情况下对这些真理和理想进行严格的考察和审视。教授们作为科研机构的新职员很快就宣称他们是决定课程内容，新教师聘用和提升等问题的权威。给予教授教学和科研广阔空间的学术自由的现代原则也是作为这些前提的自然后果而确立了。正如霍尔姆斯（Oliver Wendell Holmes）所说法律就是法官说过的话，改革后的大学就是大学教授决定要做的事情。
随着现代大学逐渐成型，大学老师开始组建专门的院系，或者科室，各自有自己学习，研究和发表成果的正式规定。正是在这个时期各种学会开始成立，包括美国历史学会（American Historical Association (1884)，美国经济学会（American Economic Association (1885),美国物理学会（American Physical Society (1899),美国政治学会（American Political Science Association (1903),美国社会学会（American Sociological Association (1905)这些都是全国性的学会，每年举行全国大会，出版专门刊登代表本协会研究成果水平的刊物。这些协会在某种程度上成为全国性的团体，它们让教授的注意力从自己学校的学生身上转向全国各地其他院校中的本专业同行。各自领域的教授的地位建立在他们发表的研究成果基础上，而这些成果又成为决定本专业甚至本研究所在全国地位的新基础。
因此现代大学的出现产生了专业知识分子阶层，也就是靠思想生活的男人（当然也包括一些女人）。在此之前，美国的智慧生活是由牧师和贵族（开国元勋们）控制的，到了19世纪是有独立思想家支配的，他们通过出版著作和文章获取收入。现在大学教授比如查尔斯?比尔德（Charles Beard）和约翰?杜威（John Dewey）也因为发表的著作和文章成为名人。不可否认的是，具有共同利益的人最终开始思想趋同。当然在美国大学里成为明星的专业知识分子也是如此。
四、
洪堡特、康德也一样，是传统意义上的大陆自由派知识分子，他们同情自由，理性，启蒙运动对宗教，神学和传统的批评。也是在这个意义上我们认为他们的学术改革是建立在理性，科学，自由的探索和追求新知识的“自由派”大学。专心创造新知识和质疑老传统的新大学肯定与追求自由但同时受到不同的甚至相互冲突的智慧传统影响的美国政治形成摩擦。美国革命和宪法是建立在18世纪苏格兰和英格兰思想家的著作基础上，但是现代大学主要受到产生于德国和法国等大陆思想家的著作。哈佛历史学家默顿?怀特（Morton White）在《美国的社会思想》（Social Thought in America: The Revolt Against Formalism）中写到大学革命的许多思想领袖都是苏格兰启蒙运动和英格兰经验主义传统的激烈批评者。这些人比如哲学界的杜威、经济学界的托尔斯坦?凡伯伦（Thorstein Veblen），历史学界的查尔斯?比尔德和詹姆斯?哈威?鲁宾孙（James Harvey Robinson），法学界的霍尔姆斯都认为英国启蒙运动的哲学思想太抽象，不是建立在经验基础上，不能解决现代生活的具体问题。许多人，尤其是杜威和罗宾逊是通过介绍源于黑格尔的德国历史思想做出这些判断的，该派学说强调文化和历史革命是理解社会和政治的钥匙。
正是从这个立场上，凡伯伦和其他经济学家反对亚当?斯密和古典政治经济学，杜威攻击大卫?休谟，比尔德和罗宾逊批评传统的不能把过去和当今问题结合起来的叙述性历史学家，霍尔姆斯攻击那些认为宪法的文字回答了关于法律的所有问题的法学家。这些思想家不仅是大学教授，还是新大学的产物。杜威和凡伯伦都在霍普金斯大学研究生院学习（还有前总统威尔逊），罗宾逊在德国弗莱堡大学获得历史学博士学位。所有这些人除了不是大学教授的霍尔姆斯以外，都得出结论美国宪法以及背后的哲学在面对现代生活的挑战时是不够的。这让他们寻找新的智慧基础，来解决政治，历史，经济，法律，和教育问题。
正是通过这些理论现代大学奠定了政治进步主义的思想基础，国家管理的自由派定位，以及对非党派专家的依赖。在很多情况下，大学提供了哲学和理论弹药以外的东西。第一波大规模的进步政策试验出现在1890年代初期，当时威斯康星大学为州长和州议会提供研究服务。后来被称为“威斯康星思想”（Wisconsin idea），成为众多学校效仿的模式。大学可以为政府提供信息，统计数据，技术指导，以便实行有效率的有智慧的施政，与政府形成伙伴关系。不仅如此，正如历史学家弗里德里克?特纳（Frederick Jackson Turner）说的，大学要培养担任法官的专家和用不偏不倚的态度调停冲突的经济利益的管理者，比如劳资冲突。虽然大学应该充当非党派的角色，学术机构隐含的目标是通过立法和管理来控制大企业，很快美国的企业领袖就明白了。但是这种非党派的理想是真诚的，进步议题还没有找到一个家，哪个政党都没有接受这些主张。只是到了1930年代，它们在罗斯福当政的民主党里永远地安了家。
威斯康星思想让大学的一个新角色大白于天下，那就是把专家和专家知识带入政治进程中间。这是新兴大学和进步运动最明显的联系之一，因为大学是设计和实施进步政策所需要的专家的逻辑上的来源。随着时间的推移，越来越多的大学按照威斯康星模式建立了研究中心，最终导致公共政策学院的创立和公共政策专家群体的形成。从合众国成立到内战的80年左右时间里，设计宪法和政策的理论家和将它们付诸实施的是同一批人。比如麦迪逊、杰斐逊，汉密尔顿，以及后来的人物如参议员丹尼尔?韦伯斯特（Daniel Webster）,副总统约翰?卡尔霍恩（John C. Calhoun）和林肯总统。随着大学的兴起，政治理论和研究项目越来越多地被学者设计发明，如杜威，比尔德或者威斯康星教授，他们在选举政治的领域之外操作，他们的经验和现实情况差别很大。对专家的依赖导致自由派人士是政府的代表还是普通百姓的永久矛盾态度，因为专家虽然以人民的名义发言，他们也非常清楚如果寻求他们的认可或者赞同是实实在在的巨大风险。
所以现代大学和现代自由派运动逐渐形成几乎同时出现决不是巧合。人们甚至进一步可以说在从内战后到当今的140年时间里，美国自由主义的命运一直是和大学的命运纠缠不清，一方的重大变化往往伴随着另一方平行的相应的变化。因为回顾这个阶段，可以说我们在20世纪所了解的自由主义就是来源于现代大学的兴起。
五、
在从1910年到1960年的50年时间里，美国学术体制继续按照新大学模式发展。由公共资金强力支持的研究型大学大幅度增加。研究型大学和小型的人文艺术学院的差别也在迅速扩大。教授治校成为通行的标准。选修制（The elective system）基本上得到普遍推行，导致关于“核心课程”和争论，以及对专业化和过分强调专门知识走向极端的担心。大学学位被学生和家长看作找工作或者未来事业发展的重要条件。到了1960年代的时候，公共官员和学术领袖几乎是全体一致地同意大学教育应该对所有人开放。
从1920年到1950年，许多名牌大学，包括哥伦比亚大学和哈佛连续不断地努力把新的重点放在专业化和在艺术，人文，社会科学等更广泛的课程的专门知识上，因为这些领域逐渐被呼吁加强，大学变得越来越世俗。杰斐逊关于“文学家的共和国”的理想在现代大学并没有完全放弃。哥伦比亚大学在1920年代建立了被广泛模仿的“当代文明”课程，目的是让学生了解可以追溯到古希腊的西方文明的伟大著作，让他们（在世界大战的前夕）了解现代学术机构是如何形成的。第二次世界大战之后，哈佛大学老师试图用包括科学，历史，文学，美国民主等非常广泛内容的通才教育的核心课程来和专业化对抗。这些有思想深度的革新在某种程度上平衡了进步事业强调的专业化和政治改革，而且，他们给学术机构提供了智慧的重量，使大学与美国的过去，以及诞生国家和大学的美国文明联系了起来。
到了1965年，美国大学在公众评价方面恐怕处于高峰。大学里的科学家在导致第二次世界大战取得胜利的发明中发挥了领导作用。从战场上回来的老兵大量进入大学，使得大学呈现成熟和严肃的氛围，这在从前是缺乏的。（后来也再没有过）所有领域的教授，包括人文和艺术类的，都享受崇高的地位。大学的体育运动通过全国性的电视转播赢得大批的观众。美国历史上最庞大的战后婴儿潮一代开始到了上大学的年龄，造成从1960年到1970年的大学人数翻了一番（从三百五十万人增加到八百万人）。
回顾历史，我们发现美国大学在1965年以后的十年左右时间里发生的根本性变化简直和1870年到1910年形成时期的变化一样大。这个时期政治，文化上的动荡，加上民权运动，反对越南战争的风起云涌，人口数量的迅速增长等使得美国高等教育发生第二次革命，诞生了更加平等的，更加意识形态化的，更政治化的大学（总体上说），但是和以前相比学术性少了，对事业上的专心致志和活力更少了。从1960年代中期到1970年代初期这段时间里，左派大学取代了自由派大学。
六、
在这个短暂时期发生的主要变化或者倒退在美国教育历史上是空前的：女子大学全部消失，大学对学生的道德规范也消失了，政府对劳动用工的管理扩张了，给大学施加压力聘用女性和少数民族教授。讲授课程内容和鼓吹政治立场之间的界限模糊了，甚至完全消失了，因为新的校园极端主义认为所有的教学在本质上都是政治，学术文化的自由基础---教学和研究的自由---在政治正确的名义下受到攻击和破坏。人文科学的融合性特征被颠覆被破坏，当人们说人文科学代表了欧洲白人男性的压迫性传统，往往带有意识形态视角的新领域不断在传统院系之外创立起来，因而增加了更多的教授职位来容纳激进思想的人士，严格的学术条件，包括精通外语等被软化甚至消除了。在1950年代和1960年代就已经扭曲的教授意见根本性地转向了左派。所有这些变化在1960年代中期到1970年代中期的喧嚣十年间全面开花，在后来的十年里逐渐定型化。
在很多重要的方面，左派大学颠倒或者修改了自由派大学的假设和做法。自由派大学的设计构造对国家的前途是乐观主义的，是朝前看的，期待民主和自由的不断进步和发展。但是左派大学的领导人是闷闷不乐的，悲观沮丧的，把美国的历史看作压迫人的故事。自由派学者相信通过理性和知识的使用不断取得进步，但是左派学者认为理性和知识是追求大公司和保守派利益的假面具。尽管老牌自由派人士在政治中开辟出专家和专家知识的角色，左派人士则蔑视专门知识，拥抱赤裸裸建立在团体利益基础上的多元化主张。自由派相信学术自由，而左派学者支持自己的学术自由，否认保守派或者温和派的学术自由，否认与自己观点不符的发言者的自由，否认学生希望了解非意识形态立场的自由。一百年前的自由派通过建立在19世纪哲学基础上的智慧视野控制了大学，我们时代的激进分子通过组织游行示威抗议活动和精心动员的来自政府管理部门的协助的政治和政治压力取得控制地位。
另外，左派大学里还有强大的反文化的因素，这是自由派大学里从来没有这么明显存在的情况。虽然自由派施加压力要求美国资本主义和美国宪法进行实际的改革，但是1960年代的激进分子更进一步发动对美国文化和中产阶级方式的全面的攻击。他们指责该生活方式压抑，乏味，堕落。1960年代的文化极端主义来自1950年代的垮掉的一代（Beats）对于新的校园左派有非常强的吸引力。因为它许诺了超过政治改革以外的东西：也就是说，另类的生活方式，颠倒的道德观念，新潮的服装样式，崭新的工作模式。垮掉的一代的文化极端主义因而几乎是整体进入大学校园，因而大学最终也从中产阶级生活的道德重新占有的避难所变成探索不同生活方式的试验场。在过去，寻找放荡不羁生活方式的美国人，或者躲避中产阶级期待的人，会逃亡到乡下，或者欧洲，如海明威或者其他作家在1920年代做的那样，或者到格林威治村（Greenwich Village）或者旧金山，但是现在这些人都在现代大学安了家。
自由派大学里确实有明显的弱点使得激进派能够用来攻击并取而代之。一百年前建立自由派大学的领袖们创立了一系列有效的防御措施来抗拒来自外部世界的攻击，如保守派商人，财产受托人，以及与教授政治观点不同的捐款人，或者因为个别教授的非正统观点而企图惩罚大学的立法者或者政客等。但结果是，对于学术自由的保护在面对来自有组织的学生和左派教授等校园内部的攻击显得无能为力。这些人扰乱课堂，警戒教授家庭和办公室，占领行政大楼，对教授和管理者发出威胁，等街头政治所用的那一套手段控制了大学。
自由派从来没有预料到自家后院起火的情形，不知道如何对付这种局面，同时又不背叛追求理性和成果堆积起来的权威的信仰。而且，自由派基于“进步时代”（Progressive Era）一直到1950年代的理论而对美国资本主义和美国宪法的全面的批评，但是没有能够在现实方面取得任何实质性的改变，这个失败让自由派显得无能懦弱，引来激进分子的蔑视。所以自由主义遭遇左派的猛烈攻击，几年之内自由主义（以及大学）就被身份政治，团体权力，和多元化取代了。而且在许多美国人眼里，自由主义迅速失掉了吸引力，和说服力，民主党一旦与自由主义拥抱反而下降到一个次要的地位。这样的后果显示了支配美国大学原则的某些指标性的东西。
七、
所以美国大学在过去一个世纪中经历了两大革命性变化。第一个是进步改革的思想所推动，第二个是文化转型的激进主义。第一场革命创造了自由派大学，第二场革命产生了左派大学。两者都有深远的影响，它们促成了自由主义和左派思想的系统阐述，因而和政治改革的广泛运动联系起来。左派大学已经风行30年以上，有没有迹象显示另外一场革命的形成呢？让大学走向更加具有建设性的方向？
比如，不妨考虑一下过去一代的重大事件，受左翼观点奴役的教授们既没有先见之明，也没有理解力。首先有共产主义和苏联的垮台，据说两者在倒台的前一天都还被学术界专家认为运转良好呢。随后同样异常的事件是社会党政策和福利国家制度遭到怀疑和丧失信用，而市场革命在同一时间在中欧和亚洲获得新的力量。美国作为世界唯一超级大国地位的出现让国际关系专家不知所措，他们本来相信多极化的世界正在形成，或者说，共产主义制度和资本主义制度最终会在某点上以接近瑞典福利国家的形式上融合在一起。洛克，亚当?斯密和美国缔造者所想象中的世界各地对自由的热情对于左派学者来说是最让人困惑不解的发展了，因为他们对此没有任何的同情心。在国内政治领域，学术界专家声称福利制度在过去三十年根本没有影响涉及都市贫穷，犯罪，家庭破裂，少女怀孕等，这是1990年代的福利改革成功所破坏的意识形态观点。大学教授们虽然热心世俗观点，却没有预见或者明白世界各地出现的宗教极端分子的兴起。外部世界一步一步地系统性地戳穿了左派学者的意识形态偏见。
但是上文只是所有错误，虚幻和误解等等不断扩张的目录的开始。整整一代人了，大学一直在推动所谓的“多元文化主义”的研究和教学，该主张鼓吹对外国社会和文化的研究。但是在2001年恐怖分子袭击后，我们迅速了解到美国培养的能够了解阿拉伯语言和伊斯兰文化的专家，能够帮助我们了解和反击这种新的威胁的专家实在太少了。结果说明了多元文化主义根本不是在研究外国文化或者语言，而是动员各种国内团体在美国国内发挥政治影响力罢了。在内容上，“多元文化主义”就和“多元化”一样空洞。
如果说美国处在企图修复1960年代激进行动对文化造成的破坏的道德反革命运动中是正确的话，那么，大学显得不协调，不合拍。离婚率和私生子数量已经在下降，都市犯罪在规模上在下降，达到了几十年前的水平，少年喝酒和吸毒在减少，文化活力的众多其他标准都显示情况在改善的迹象。所有这些都显示1960年代控制大学的反律法主义（antinomianism）失去了往日的威风，中产阶级理想的持久力量正在重新得到确认。
大学教授们对我们时代最重要的发展的观点一直是错的，大错特错了。在他们看来，正如棒球明星尤吉?贝拉（Yogi Berra）所说“未来不是从前的重复”。在很大程度上，科学之外的大学教授失去了理解和影响外来世界的能力。他们的地位越来越多地被私人研究中心和更接近现实的，更关注社会最新发展的独立学者所取代。比如曼哈顿研究所（Manhattan Institute）美国企业研究所（American Enterprise Institute）胡佛研究所（Hoover Institution）等研究中心在最近几十年来对公共政策领域的影响力超过所有大学的公共政策学院加在一起还大。众多独立的报刊比如《新批评》（New Criterion）《评论》（Commentary）《哈德逊评论》（Hudson Review）都从大学抢走了在艺术，人文和公共事务等方面的思想界领袖地位。当今最著名的历史学家的著作都是非学术界人士如戴维?麦卡洛（David McCullough）和朗?切诺（Ron Chernow），连同他们的恩人理查德?吉尔德（Richard Gilder）和刘易斯?莱尔曼（Lewis Lehrman）在复兴美国历史研究方面比任何大学的历史教授都大。学术界当今失去影响力是因为三十年前它把赌注押在了1960年的激进思想上了，显然他们输得精光。
而且，左派大学的失败，连同其某些代表人物的过分行为，逐渐导致受托人和捐款者甚至校长和院系主任提出大学到底往哪里去的问题，这些问题早就该提出来了。比如，如果大学教授们用同一种方式思考，如果针对重大问题的真正的辩论被打压，如果意识形态言论充斥思想的讨论，如果学生对和平运动的了解比对宪法的了解还多，对美国科罗拉多大学种族研究系主任沃德?丘吉尔（Ward Churchill）的了解比对温斯顿?丘吉尔（Winston Churchill）的了解还多，大学如何履行自己的责任？
20年前，当阿兰?布鲁姆（Allan Bloom）出版其畅销书《美国思想的终结》（The Closing of the American Mind）时，他是少数几个呼吁人们对左派大学产生的破坏性影响的人物之一。如今，有越来越多的倡议时不时在校园里出现不仅要诊断问题而且提出改进的办法。确实，现在有几十个组织推动校园里思想活动和思想多元化。
大学受托人开始打破人为的障碍，强调不仅大学教授有资格对课程改革和聘用教授发表意见。比如，今年早些时候，达特茅斯学院（Dartmouth College）校友选出了两个候选人进入校董事会，他们在集会上呼吁思想多元化和校园的更高学术标准。科罗拉多大学的董事会对沃德?丘吉尔的可耻失败以及对自己学校的学术标准的影响感到厌恶，进一步创建了新的本科生“西方文明”课程。纽约州立大学的受托人和弗吉尼亚州乔治?梅森大学（George Mason University）的受托人受到位于华盛顿的美国受托人与校友委员会（American Council of Trustees and Alumni）的鼓励也推行了支持西方文明和美国历史的学术标准。几年前，纽约州立大学的受托人看到30年前激进思想控制的标准的垮台受到震动，采取步骤加强了大学录取的标准，为课程中注入了真实的内容。其他地方的受托人，受到这些例子的鼓励，也发现如果他们的大学要得到拯救，就不敢依靠教授们做这些事情。
立法者和公共官员也在观望是否要采取行动以便对公众对大学走向的关注做出反应。因此，得到联邦政府的支持的中东研究所的反对犹太人行为的担心，国会现在正考虑立法加强对政府拨款的监督，而且如果发现单位有这类滥用的行为将剥夺这些机构的资金支持。对于类似担心的反应，美国人权委员会最近宣布它要调查大学校园里的反犹太人丑闻。
与此同时，有些慈善家开始注意到校园中的反美主义，和其他病症尤其是反犹主义，反伊斯兰主义，种族隔离主义，和反企业的关系。看到这些罪恶的联系，当然是对的，看到需要打击左派大学豢养的广泛的意识形态组成部分的这些罪恶也是对的。这样的捐款者，一旦付诸行动，将带来新的紧迫性挑战从学术界驱逐这种正统做法。
最近一些年校园中最激动人心的发展或许是各种中心或者项目机构的建立，它们专门进行政治自由和自由机构的历史的研究。比如关于美国理想研究的詹姆斯麦迪逊项目（James Madison Program）,杜克大学的格斯特项目（Gerst Program），克莱尔门特学院（Claremont McKenna College）的塞尔维托里中心（the Salvatori Center），布朗大学的政治理论项目组（Political Theory Project），科尔盖特大学（Colgate）的自由和西方文明研究中心（the Center for Freedom and Western Civilization）等。这些项目都是从几个捐款者的合作中发展起来的，这些校友担心母校的左翼倾向，保守派或者温和派教授担心学习了很多关于种族和性别身份的知识，却对自己的文明的思想基础所知甚少。诸如此类的项目可能出现在每个重点大学的校园里，或者由私人捐款者创立，或者更好地通过学术界的捐赠累积起来后设立。
这些发展代表了挑战左派大学的运动的最前沿。这些努力的目的不是要在大学里给予保守派的代表和其他利益团体同样的立足之地。思想多元化，真理追求，尊重自由机构的遗产等既不是保守派的也不是左翼自由派的理想。杰斐逊明白这些理想是大学的核心价值，处于他的“文学家的共和国”的核心。洪堡特也认为自由派大学是推动自由原则，自由探索，不受妨碍地追求真理的手段。在大学校园里恢复这些理想的努力因而是保守派和自由派都应该鼓掌庆贺的好事。左派大学不应该被右派大学取而代之。而应该被献身于自由的教育和高深的研究的真正的大学取而代之。
译自：“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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