The Failure of Pluralism

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ASSEMBLY 'r^FmlzrW^ INSTRUCTIONS jj) J^p T ihe ihe central quandary of our universities during the last decade has been the lack of any consensus about their place in society. In the absense of such an understanding, universities and colleges have been generally run as pluralistic institutions, not as functioning wholes but as conglomerations. advantage of administering an institution as if it were pluralistic that the administrator can decide every conflict of interest with a compromise. But the disadvantage of such administration that the inevitably conflicting interests, egged on by compromise of their fundamental needs, may conspire to dismantle the whole enterprise. Until Clark Kerr wrote Uses of the University in 1963, the pluralistic nature of universities was felt to be an historical accident. With Kerr's publication, however, pluralism became an explicit value to be admired and imitated in the development of state university systems all over the country. The Kerr said, is not one community but several. A community, like medieval communities of masters and students, should have common interests. In the multiversity, they are varied, even conNicholas S. Thompson associate professor of psychology and biology at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.