{"id":8072,"date":"2014-03-17T06:27:51","date_gmt":"2014-03-17T06:27:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/03\/17\/roger-scruton-on-the-decline-of-the-modern-university\/"},"modified":"2014-03-17T06:27:51","modified_gmt":"2014-03-17T06:27:51","slug":"roger-scruton-on-the-decline-of-the-modern-university","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/03\/17\/roger-scruton-on-the-decline-of-the-modern-university\/","title":{"rendered":"Roger Scruton on the Decline of the Modern University"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our man in Boulder, Spencer Case, here<\/a> interviews Roger Scruton.  I have reproduced the whole piece, bolding<\/strong> those portions I consider most important.  To my pleasure, I find myself in  agreement with  what Scruton maintains below, though he ought to have avoided the "ideological concentration camp" exaggeration.  I reproduce the whole of the interview to preserve it in case the link goes bad or the site goes down.<\/span><\/p>\n

……………..<\/span><\/p>\n

In this exclusive interview with The College Fix,<\/em> globally renown British philosopher and polemicist Roger Scruton addresses the decline of the modern university.<\/span><\/p>\n

Scruton<\/a>, a highly respected, decorated scholar and author of more than 30 books, including his recent How to Think Seriously About the Planet: The Case for Environmental Conservatism<\/em>, suggests colleges today have become more like \u201cclosed, ideological \u2026 concentration camps.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He explores why that happened, why it\u2019s wrong, and offers solutions. The interview was conducted by College Fix<\/em> contributor Spencer Case last week at the University of Colorado \u2013 Boulder.<\/span><\/p>\n

SC:<\/strong> So, I want to know how you would describe the state of the university. And I\u2019m thinking in particular about the United States, but in other places as well. Do you see things generally moving in a positive direction or a negative direction, and why?<\/span><\/p>\n

RS:<\/strong> I\u2019m unusual in that I\u2019m somebody with an academic status but who\u2019s not part, not really part, of a university. I\u2019ve been twenty years freelancing, supporting myself through writing and various small business-type activities, because I value my own independence, really. So I have observed it from the outside, but I do have the impression that there are things which are going wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n

One is the way in which the difficult topics, the difficult subjects, rather, in the humanities, are being displaced by purely ideological subjects. It used to be the case that at the heart of the humanities there were difficult things like the classical languages, modern languages, literature \u2013read properly and critically discussed \u2013 and so on, the \u201cGreat Books\u201d and all the rest, in music the study of harmony and counter-point, in philosophy the analytical discipline that we know about so well. All those were real intellectual disciplines. But I see more and more they\u2019re being replaced by gender studies and other forms of essentially ideological confrontation with the modern world.<\/span><\/p>\n

SC:<\/strong> Now since you\u2019re on that, that\u2019s a great segue to another question. The question is: there is a kind of tension between, I think, more traditional type philosophers and people who are into feminism, gender studies, this kind of stuff. I\u2019m sort of the mind that these fields inject politics and political activism too much into philosophy. But they have responses to that. One of their responses is: \u201cWe\u2019re concerned about justice, we\u2019re concerned about authority, and these really are perennial philosophical issues.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

RS:<\/strong> Yeah, sure. There is plenty of room for people to include as part of the philosophical discussions of justice the whole question about the relation between man and woman, all the questions that feminists consider. There\u2019s absolutely no reason why that shouldn\u2019t be included. But, if the assumption is that one has to be a feminist, one has to arrive at a particular conclusion as a result of studying this, then what is involved is not philosophical discussion but ideology. The whole defining nature of philosophy is that you start from free inquiry and you don\u2019t actually know what you\u2019re going to come up with as a result of your arguments. To think that you have to have the conclusion prior to the investigation is effectually to say that this is a form of indoctrination.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

SC:<\/strong> I mean, don\u2019t you think that you hold certain conclusions in advance of investigation? I mean, you probably knew in advance of investigation that you weren\u2019t likely to become a global skeptic, for instance.<\/span><\/p>\n

RS:<\/strong> Of course there are certain things. All of us hold certain premises on which our world view rests and we find it very difficult to question those premises. But we also know that there are controversial areas in which other people do not agree with us, and when we enter those areas it is our obligation as philosophers to open our minds, consider the arguments, and perhaps arrive at conclusions that we didn\u2019t expect. And surely, this area about the nature of the relation between the sexes and so on is one of those. It\u2019s quite clear that the feminist position is not accepted by everyone in the world around us, that it isn\u2019t something that you have to have as a premise for your worldview if we are to see the world in which we live as it is. It\u2019s not like the morality which tells us \u201cThou shalt not kill\u201d and so on. And there is a kind of a closing of the mind that has happened here which excludes those that disagree with a particular position.  And considering that some of those are highly intelligent people who don\u2019t just wallow in their own prejudices, this is obviously a threat to our academic freedom.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

SC:<\/strong> When you look at the current state of higher education, is there one philosophical mistake that you see implicated in getting us to the current sorry state of things?<\/span><\/p>\n

RS:<\/strong> Well, yes. I would say that \u2026 [pause] yeah, I think there is one basic weakness in all the developments that I most would criticize. And that is that they are based upon embodying an ideological conclusion into the curriculum rather than a method of inquiry.<\/strong> And I think all of the humanities that have made our university so important and so great and made them contribute to the surrounding civic order, they all had this idea in their hearts of free inquiry into a subject matter, a defined subject matter, real intellectual questions, and a body of literature that helped people to understand the area. But I think what has happened is that new subjects, or new disciplines, so called, have come into being which do not require methods of inquiry, but they do require adherence to a particular conclusion.<\/span><\/p>\n

SC:<\/strong> Alright, well I want to ask you about the thesis of a book I\u2019m reading now by Robert Nisbet. The book is The Degradation of the Academic Dogma<\/em>. And he basically argues that the university is the last medieval guild, the last medieval institution, to have survived the influences of modernism. And it requires certain things, like the respect for seeking truth for its own sake and scholarship, and it requires a kind of authority structure and it requires things that are really sort of out of place in the modern world. And he sees that the university is now being eroded by a cultural outlook that is incompatible with the values it requires. And I\u2019m wondering if you could comment on that.<\/span><\/p>\n

RS:<\/strong> Yes. I haven\u2019t read this book, but I do have a tendency to agree with Robert Nisbet when I read him. I think the universities have certainly changed from what they were, from what they were when I was educated, actually. It is no longer possible to see them as uniquely involved in the dispassionate pursuit for truth for its own sake. That is something that is gone, for the reasons that I\u2019ve said earlier, that in the humanities at least disciplines which pursued truth for its own sake have been replaced with disciplines that pursue political conformity. And the indoctrination of a specific worldview which is that of a very small minority, which has, I think, no relation to the way that normal people live.<\/strong> So in a sense he\u2019s right.<\/span><\/p>\n

But I don\u2019t think \u2013 after all, the university isn\u2019t entirely dominated by the humanities. On the contrary, the humanities have had a dwindling role to play for the very reason that they\u2019ve become politicized. So they\u2019ve become uninteresting to many students. A good university has a flourishing science section, and flourishing professional sections devoted to medicine and law and so on, and that\u2019s always been the case, since the Middle Ages.<\/span><\/p>\n

SC:<\/strong> Now, that\u2019s great that you segue into the humanities. If you\u2019re looking at the university today and the trends that are affecting it \u2013 even superficially \u2013 one of things that you\u2019re going to notice is this decline in the humanities. And I\u2019ve noticed that there are really two different components to this trend. There\u2019s a sort of \u201cbottom-up\u201d trend of students not being as interested in it, fewer choosing to take up the topic. And there\u2019s also a \u201ctop-down\u201d component to it. The top-down component is administrators seem hostile to the humanities \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

RS<\/strong>: Right.<\/span><\/p>\n

SC:<\/strong> \u2026 and it seems philosophy in particular. So if there are funding cuts, we know who\u2019s going to bear most of the brunt of that. And I wonder, do you think that they are simply responding to the desires of the students, the preferences of the students, or is there some greater ideology or something behind that?<\/span><\/p>\n

RS:<\/strong> I\u2019m not sure, because I don\u2019t know the situation in American universities as well as you do. I would say that administrators are obviously very concerned to raise funds for the university, and if it\u2019s a question of closing down a department, they\u2019re not going to close down a department that brings in funding. And of course, the humanities departments, on the whole, don\u2019t bring in funding in the way that science departments do, or law departments. So, they are vulnerable. And, having become vulnerable, they make themselves more vulnerable, of course, if they simply become centers of trouble-making ideological conformity. That inevitably will have a negative impact. But I don\u2019t know whether the administrators have an ideological motive.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the university where I taught part-time recently, at St. Andrews in Scotland, they have closed down departments because of lack of funding, and it has been entirely on financial grounds. But it\u2019s interesting that the department they closed down first was music, while keeping open business studies and things like that which are, on my view, complete non-sense, really, for a university to be involved in.<\/strong> But the business studies departments produce money, the music department didn\u2019t, even though, of course, music, from Plato\u2019s day, has been the fundamental discipline in the humanities. Plato made it fundamental to the university when he invented the academy, and it should have remained so. But it is vulnerable because it\u2019s expensive to run and doesn\u2019t bring in money. And yet, it seems to me, a university that doesn\u2019t have a flourishing music department doesn\u2019t really deserve the name.<\/span><\/p>\n

SC:<\/strong> Final question. Also in Nisbet\u2019s book he makes the point that the decline of the university doesn\u2019t necessarily mean the decline of higher learning. The decline of the university could herald the dawn of new institutions that fill the same role, and perhaps may do the same things even better. I think of things like the Khan Academy and the Teaching Company, and the Teaching Company allows people to buy cds of lectures on various topics. And it seems to me that if you want to be an autodidact this really is the best time in which to live. You just have the ability to learn a lot on your own, and pretty cheaply. And I wonder if that is encouraging to you.<\/span><\/p>\n

RS:<\/strong> It is, in a way. I would hate to see the universities disappear because they are fundamental institutions in Western society. They have been symbols of intellectual freedom, symbols of the civic virtue which I think most distinguishes us. Namely, the ability of people of different views to live together and to discuss their differences. That is a fantastic thing, and the university is a symbol of that. But I agree that the more universities become these closed, ideological sort of concentration camps, the more people will look for their education outside. With the internet and everything, nothing there can stop them. And one has to accept that. And maybe that will force universities to become a bit more realistic about what they\u2019re offering.<\/span><\/p>\n

SC:<\/strong> That\u2019s all I have. Is there anything you would like to add?<\/span><\/p>\n

RS:<\/strong> Oh, what would I like to add? [laughter] I think I would like to add one thing, which is it seems to me that universities need to make an effort to reach out to those who disagree with the general liberal ideology, that they ought to be more self-knowing about all this. They ought to ask themselves the question \u201chow is it that we got into this position, where only one point of view is represented, and also that any other point of view is persecuted?\u201d which seems to be the growing reality. And I think universities do need to go through a period of self-criticism where they ask themselves that, and whether an effort shouldn\u2019t be made simply to open things again.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fix contributor Spencer Case is a philosophy graduate student at the University of Colorado. He is a U.S. Army veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan and an Egypt Fulbright alumnus.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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Our man in Boulder, Spencer Case, here interviews Roger Scruton.  I have reproduced the whole piece, bolding those portions I consider most important.  To my pleasure, I find myself in  agreement with  what Scruton maintains below, though he ought to have avoided the "ideological concentration camp" exaggeration.  I reproduce the whole of the interview to … Continue reading “Roger Scruton on the Decline of the Modern University”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,290,299],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-life-of-the-mind","category-studiousness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8072\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}