The Jews and the University 2: Laurence Veysey and The Ideals of the Modern University

Andrew Dickson White, founding president of Cornell University

As I mentioned in my post the other day, the starting point for many discussions of the modern American university is frequently Laurence Veysey’s The Emergence of the American University, first published in 1965. Purely as a work of intellectual history, Veysey’s volume still stands out. It is clear, comprehensive, interesting, thoroughly-researched, and original. I imagine that after first reading it, most people would have a similar reaction: Thank you for making this make sense, and for such an entertaining journey.

Veysey’s main thesis is that the modern American university took shape between the Civil War and World War I, and that the basic arrangements of that period remain with us to this day. While American colleges certainly existed and proliferated before the Civil War (mostly thanks to various Protestant denominations), the scene was transformed in this period through government investment (the Morrill Act, which established land grant universities, was enacted in 1862), the alignment of higher education with industry, and the importation of the German university model by the 10,000 Americans who earned PhDs at the University of Berlin and Germany’s other institutions in the mid-19^th century. The increasing industrialization, urbanization, and ethnic and religious diversification of this period also had immense effects on the contours of the American academy.

Veysey argues that American universities founded or transformed in this period emerged out of three various understandings about the purpose of the university, which he identifies as: i) Service; ii) Research; and iii) Liberal Culture. The service ideal postulated that the university existed to train citizens who would be of service to society as professionals and political leaders. Andrew D. White, founding president of Cornell University, took this tack, bringing professional schools under the umbrella of the university. The purpose of the university in this understanding is to be responsive to, and at the forefront of, society.

The research ideal was modeled on the German university, and prized original scholarly research (wissenschaft, or what Americans came to refer to as Science) above all else. A university was to be at the apex of an educational system, and the faculty were to be its most honored individuals. A university did not exist for the sake of professional education, but rather to create the space in which a professor, surrounded by a small number of highly qualified graduate students who themselves would become professors, could produce new knowledge. Johns Hopkins, which originally did not have an undergraduate program, was modeled on this ideal. Henry Tappan’s vision for the University of Michigan, which led to one of the early developments of a public education system in America, also drew inspiration from Germany.

The Liberal Culture ideal, the third in Veysey’s typology, was understood in at least two different ways—which Bruce Kimball is very helpful in understanding. As Kimball observes in his outstanding book Orators and Philosophers, one way in which “the liberal arts” is understood sees reading the classics of civilization as handing down a tradition, forming the young adult mind and body into a person who does what liberal (meaning free—people with leisure) do. Kimball calls this the oratio ideal, in which the liberal arts teach the discipline of public speaking and influence, the work of only free people in the ancient world. The second version of the liberal arts, according to Kimball, follows the ratio ideal, in which studying the classics of Western thought trains one to be a critical, independent thinker (a rational person). According to this understanding, studying ancient Greek philosophy is less about doing what gentlemen do than about becoming truly free-minded. While Yale of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries might typify the oratio ideal, Robert M. Hutchins’s University of Chicago would exemplify the ratio ideal.

Veysey argues that these ideals do not remain distinct, but ultimately come to overlap. Johns Hopkins creates an undergraduate college; Cornell becomes a research institution; Yale allows electives and brings its affiliated engineering school inside the university; Hutchins ultimately leaves Chicago with Mortimer Adler to lead St. Johns College, where they can more fully develop the ratio approach of Great Books, while Chicago preserves some elements of his program and takes on aspects of the other ideals. (All of this leads to the situation Clark Kerr would dub “the multiversity” in his 1963 classic The Uses of the University, which will be the subject of a future post.)

Veysey’s typology, along with Kimball’s analysis of liberal education, is very useful for clarifying the confusion that often sets in when trying to understand many institutions of higher education.

 

Letter to a Student About Osama bin Laden

Dear Sara,

You wrote to me this morning asking for guidance about how to respond to the death of Osama bin Laden. I’m glad you asked this question, and I’m glad you have the moral sensitivity to engage it.

It’s important to remind ourselves of who Bin Laden was and what he sought to do. Bin Laden was a mass murderer on an enormous scale. He was a man of hate, and he caused untold death and destruction to human beings around the world, let alone to America itself. There is no eulogy for him.

So our first response is that of the Bible’s Book of Proverbs which states, “When the wicked perish there is song” (Prov. 11:10). To see wickedness removed from the earth, to see evil stopped, is a joyous thing. We are thrilled, just as the Jews were thrilled when Haman was stopped, just as Americans were thrilled on V-E and V-J day. Our response is one of thanks and gratitude and joy.

At the same time, as your question itself suggests, something feels weird about celebrating death. It feels somehow unseemly to many people, a violation of the spirit in which we removed the wine from the second cup at the seder just two weeks ago. As the midrash recounts, as the Israelites sang at the sea after the drowning of their Egyptian enemies, the angels were about to start singing when God reproved them saying that God’s own children were dying. This impulse evokes another line in the Book of Proverbs, “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and do not let your heart be glad when he stumbles” (Prov. 24:17).

Yet I think here it is important to remember two things. First, as a colleague of mine reminded me, the enemy in question in the verse may not be an Osama bin Laden type of person—it is more likely your neighbor with whom you bicker, or your roommate who you can’t get along with. Butchers of the variety of Bin Laden are in a different category. We can sing at their downfall.

Second, the standard of not singing recorded in the midrash is a standard for the angels, not for us. Neither God nor Moses gets angry with the Israelites for singing. Quite the opposite: Moses’s sister Miriam is the one who gathers the women and exhorts all the children of Israel to sing. The midrash is making a theological statement about a reality that may exist in the mind of God. But as the Rabbis state many times, the Torah speaks in the language of human beings. It responds to human realities and human emotions. God and the angels do not have to deal with death the way that humans do. There is nothing wrong with celebrating the death of those who seek to kill us.

Christianity has given us a radical conception of love, and I would refer you to my Christian colleagues about how their tradition shapes their response to Bin Laden’s death. Jewish tradition acknowledges that evil exists in the world, that evil people exist in the world, and that we must be unflinching in countering them. There is no room for moral paralysis when fighting a man like Bin Laden.

You point out that this news comes on Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and you ask, rhetorically, what our reaction might have been to the death of Hitler. There is no question there. Bin Laden was not Hitler, but not for lack of ambition. We celebrate his end—not necessarily with parades and balloons, for his demise cannot bring back those whose lives he ended. But we are happy that a man who perpetrated such gruesome crimes against our nation, and sought to do so against our people and all of humanity, is no longer among the living.

Sincerely,

Rabbi Josh