Nisbet is that rare phenomenon, a sociologist with a sense of
history (The Sociological Tradition, 1967). The Degradation of the
Academic Dogma is a serious challenge to the crescendo of liberal
voices demanding modernization, "relevance" and "involvement" as
the antidotes to university turmoil. Nisbet proceeds by a sensitive
reconstruction of the university as an institution and an idea, the
last surviving medieval structure, now under assault by "the same
buffets of political and economic modernism that. . . in earlier
centuries levelled the medieval knight, guildsman, patriarch and
bishop." Intrinsically feudal, elitist and authoritarian, its
raison d'etre was cumulative - corporate knowledge, scholarship and
dispassionate reason. Presently Nisbet sees it losing, doubting,
and repudiating its mission in a misguided effort to serve society
as "higher capitalist, chief of research establishment,
superhumanitarian, benign therapist, adjunct government, and loyal
revolutionary opposition." The seeds of nemesis have been sown
since 1945 with the infusion of large sums of government and
corporation money earmarked for "academic entrepreneurs, for
companies known as centers, bureaus, and institutes." The result:
academic departments are now in eclipse, professors are "hired" no
longer "appointed," consultantships, jobs in industry and
government and other forms of "genteel moonlighting" are destroying
the traditionally autarkic academic community and playing havoc
with loyalties and authority structures. Student revolutionaries
are not a cause but a result of disruption; the "prior destruction
of academic authority in a very large measure caused the student
uprisings." As to recommendations, Nisbet suggests "clearing the
scene," e.g. dismantling the centers, bureaus and institutes and
reasserting the authority of administrators, presidents, deans and
department chairmen. He's not very hopeful that it can be done. "It
will be called unscrambling of eggs." It will. (Kirkus Reviews)
This is one of the most important books ever published about the
American university. Robert Nisbet accuses universities of having
betrayed themselves. Over the centuries they earned the respect of
society by attempting to remain faithful to what he terms "the
academic dogma," the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. The
measure of a university's greatness and of the stature of an
individual scholar was determined not by the immediate usefulness
of the work done, but by how much it contributed to scholarship,
learning, and teaching.
American universities abandoned this ideal, Nisbet charges,
after World War II, welcoming onto their campuses academic
entrepreneurs engaged in the "higher capitalism," the highly
profitable sale of knowledge. This "reformation," says Nisbet, has
resulted in the greatest change in the structure and values of the
university that has occurred since their founding as guilds in the
Middle Ages. And it may be responsible, for reasons he spells out
in convincing detail, for their eventual demise as centers of
learning.
In her introduction, Gertrude Himmelfarb pays tribute to Robert
Nisbet for his prescience in analyzing the reformation of the
university in the postwar period. A second reformation, she says,
has further undermined the academic dogma, first by applying the
principles of affirmative action and multiculturalism to the
curriculum as well as to student admissions and faculty hiring, and
then by "deconstructing" the disciplines, thus subverting the ideas
of truth, reason, and objectivity. The Degradation of the Academic
Dogma is even more pertinent today than when it was first published
a quarter of a century ago. For those concerned with the integrity
of the university and of intellectual life, Robert Nisbet has once
again proved himself a prophet and a mentor.
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