The Future of the Research University and the Fate of the Humanities

Abstract

T he American research university has received a great deal of attention during the past decade or so, mostly by concerned observers who believe that the research university is in danger of losing its crucial role in the American system of higher education (Ehrenberg; Cole, Barber, and Graubard; Whiston and Geiger). Under these circumstances, a discussion of its future and its potential impact on the development of the humanities in particular, appears to be a difWcult and potentially not-very-rewarding task. If the skeptics are correct in their analysis, the university’s future is at best uncertain, which means that the fate of the humanities as part of the research university is equally uncertain. Among the critics of the more recent evolution of the university we Wnd, for instance, Bill Readings, who has argued that the new university (by which he means mostly the research university) is more interested in the excellence of its administration and its national reputation than in its commitment to the subject matter of teaching or research. The “university of excellence” strives for public recognition without much regard for the values that once deWned the idea of a university. By contrasting the contemporary American or international university with Humboldt’s ideal of the university, Readings gets the fuel for his highly suggestive and far-reaching polemic without paying too much attention to the actual evolution of the American research university during the twentieth century and its more recent difWculties. However, these problems must be examined in more speciWc terms than Readings’s rather general charges allow (for a critical assessment, see LaCapra). Therefore I propose to begin with a brief account of the present state of the American research university by examining the more recent development of its central elements before I address the complex