What’s the point of our universities?

In a recent story from the New York Times Chicago News Cooperative, James Warren reviews The Great American University: Its Rise to Preeminence, Its Indispensable National Role, Why it Must be Protected, a newly-released book about elite universities in which Jonathan R. Cole opines that the University of Chicago is “our closest approximation to the idea of a great university….It is a meritocracy of ideas, a place where ideas flourish in an open way.”

What caught my eye about this story was its reference to a document I had not heard of previously: the University of Chicago’s 1967 Kalven Committee Report, a two-page report drafted to define the role of universities amidst the domestic turmoil surrounding the Vietnam War. I was struck by the following three paragraphs, in which the the purpose of universities in the United States–a topic still being debated vigorously today–is laid out clearly and unequivocally:

A university has a great and unique role to play in fostering the development of social and political values in a society. The role is defined by the distinctive mission of the university and defined too by the distinctive characteristics of the university as a community. It is a role for the long term.

The mission of the university is the discovery, improvement, and dissemination of knowledge. Its domain of inquiry and scrutiny includes all aspects and all values of society. A university faithful to its mission will provide enduring challenges to social values, policies, practices, and institutions. By design and by effect, it is the institution which creates discontent with the existing social arrangements and proposes new ones. In brief, a good university, like Socrates, will be upsetting.

The instrument of dissent and criticism is the individual faculty member or the individual student. The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic. It is, to go back once again to the classic phrase, a community of scholars. To perform its mission in the society, a university must sustain an extraordinary environment of freedom and inquiry and maintain an independence from political fashions, passions, and pressures. A university, if it is to be true to its faith in intellectual inquiry, must embrace, be hospitable to, and encourage the widest diversity of views within its own community. It is a community but only for the limited, albeit great, purposes of teaching and research. It is not a club, it is not a trade association, it is not a lobby.”

I happen to agree with the authors’ views, and I’d like to know what readers think. Did the authors hit the mark, or do universities serve a different function in society? And assuming the authors did get it right, is this the role universities should play?

P.S. – In the event that discussion around this topic turns to politics, please be respectful and back up your claims with evidence. In my opinion, too many comments to posts in the politics section are inaccurate and vitriolic, and do little to advance people’s understanding of a given issue.