Karen Cronick
Nils Gilman
(2025) refers to the universities’ “core mission” as something that must be
preserved. For him this involves, “ (a) the creation of highly well-trained
experts; (b) path-breaking knowledge creation; and, [….] (c) knowledge
preservation and transmission". He explicitly rejects social criticism.
This means that he would eliminate a good part of philosophy, sociology, anthropology and social psychology. Although he promotes “’Wissenschaft’, i.e. the pursuit and preservation of systematic truth” he does not include a critical examination of what truth means. One might ask if he thinks that there can be “truth” in concepts like the ontology of ideas, the nature of mental representations, the comparative study of political systems, critical world history, the nature of abstract objects (like the unicorn, for example), the nature of different scientific and the methodology of humanistic research concerns (for example: mathematical models, statistical studies, empiricism in general, ethnography, narrative studies, phenomenological approaches, grounded theory, and case studies).
Imagine a history class in which the only exercise would be to memorize dates! Imagine studying Homer’s Iliad without considering his characters’ motives, or the nature of unjust kingship, or the meaning of heroism. Imagine reading about Socrates’ death without considering the recent history of The Thirty Tyrants that briefly ruled Athens just before his trial and execution. We would have to stop analyzing the nature of justice and the aspirations of the Illustration in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
He says
there is a “desperate need for the humanities to reconceive themselves not as a
site for remediating bad things about the past but rather as a site for
preserving and transmitting what is worthy about the past.” In the first place,
we would not be able to discuss what “worthy” means. It is an historically
determined value judgement.
Most
literature would be banned. There is no way we could read Harriet Beecher
Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, and less even,
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. We could only discuss George Washington’s
honesty, and the fact that they landed on the moon in 1969. We could watch
Charlie Chaplin movies, but not talk about how he was banned from reentering
the U.S. in 1952 for being “anti American”.
I believe
universities should be places where everything can be discussed, criticized,
placed in context, and either accepted or rejected because of valid reasons.
This is science´s core belief. Nothing is banned. We no longer need to try
Socrates or Giordano Bruno or John Thomas Scopes[1].
We look for better research methods, develop libraries, and ensure the well-being
of the students and faculty that use them. We try to extend knowledge to those
who want it. We publish results and invite criticism. That is what universities
do.
Reference
Nils Gilman
(2025, 11 de April). How Universities Can Save Themselves. Persuasion.
https://www.persuasion.community/p/how-universities-can-save-themselves
[1] The trial of Thomas Scopes in 1925 was a legal proceeding
carried out by the State of Tennessee. He was accused of teaching the theory of
evolution in a state-funded high school. Scopes was found guilty and was fined
$100, but later the verdict was overturned.
