(DOWNLOAD) "Introduction (One) (American Academics Evaluation)" by Arena Journal # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Introduction (One) (American Academics Evaluation)
- Author : Arena Journal
- Release Date : January 22, 2002
- Genre: Religion & Spirituality,Books,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 170 KB
Description
After the events of 11 September the American Council of Trustees and Alumni--a US-based conservative think-tank--commissioned a report into the influence of American academics on the cultural life of the nation. Entitled 'Defending Civilization: Why Our Universities are Failing America', the report tabled various critical assessments of US policy made by academics in lectures, student newspapers and the like. While this kind of political surveillance is pernicious in its own right, from another perspective the report seems anachronistic in its willingness to believe that universities have been able to maintain a role in the cultural interpretation of their societies. While such interpretation no doubt continues, the capacity of universities to undertake this traditional role has been greatly reduced in recent decades. The university remains influential but today exercises its influence in very new ways. Ideas have fused with market values, helping to reconstitute rather than interpret society, while the techno-sciences and vocational disciplines have flourished at the expense of the sciences and humanities. In short, the university as a place for the discussion of ideas, and transmission of tradition; a cultural institution which can sustain the cultural framework for social interpretation, is less under threat by intervention from the conservative Right than it is undermined by an embracing structural change: the fusion of intellectual practices and market forces.