Recovering the University’s Soul

The contemporary university is widely acknowledged to be in crisis. Loss of public confidence, relentless tuition increases, and intensifying debates over speech and academic freedom have called into question its purpose and institutional legitimacy. Yet these seemingly discrete crises and external pressures are best understood as symptoms of a deeper contradiction—one that reaches to the very heart of the university’s self-understanding and, at a still deeper level, to its conception of the human being it exists to serve.