This book is premised upon the assumption that the core purpose of
universities is to create, preserve, transmit, validate, and find
new applications for knowledge. It is written in the perspective of
critical university studies, in which university governance
processes should take ideas and discourse about ideas seriously,
far more seriously than they are often taken within many of today's
universities, since doing so is the key to achieving this purpose.
Specifically, we assert that the best way for universities to take
ideas seriously, and so to best achieve their purpose, is to
consciously recognize and conserve the entire range of available
ideas. Though the current emphasis upon factors such as student
headcounts, increased efficiency and job creation are undoubtedly
important, far more is at stake in universities than only these
factors. From this premise, we deduce insights and arguments about
academic freedom, as well as factors such as control and monitoring
of the market place of ideas, the structure of information flows
within universities, the role of language in university governance,
and relationships between administrators, faculty members and
students. We identify impediments to achieving the core purpose of
universities, including the idea vetting systems of
authoritarianism, corporatism, illiberalism, supernaturalism and
political correctness. We elucidate how these impediments inhibit
successful achievement of the core purpose of the university. In
response to these impediments we prescribe relatively autonomous
universities characterized by openness, transparency, dissent, and
the maintenance of balance between conflicting perspectives,
values, and interests.
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