Word: functional
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...University of California at Berkeley. He received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and his Ph.D. from Yale. "He's as close as we can get to the ideological leader of the New Left," said one Berkeley grad student. The following is excerpts from a speech--"The Ideological Function of the University" -- which Lichtman presented at the Berkeley Faculty Peace Committee's "Convocation on the War and the University" in April of this year...
This conclusion follows directly from Mr. Kerr's own analysis, for if the university performs all the functions which society imposes upon it, it will in course most ably fulfill that predominant function which every social system requires for its very existence--the justification of its established structure of power and privilege, the masking or idealization of its deficiencies and the discrediting of dissent. This is an ideological function...
...course, it is not the corporate function of the university to speak to every public issue, nor even to the vast majority of prevailing social concerns. The fundamental purpose of the university does not encompass any special policy in regard to most contemporary matters, and in its public pronouncements, and corporate activity, the university should refrain from endorsing particular views in the overwhelming number of cases...
...defining purpose, and reject them if they do. And so, it is also obligated to protest when society has undertaken to violate, either in regard to the university itself, or humanity at large, those values the university is specifically charged to honor as a requirement of its public function...
...discover the public function of the university one must begin with its internal imperative--the gathering of a community of scholars in devotion to disinterested knowledge. Such, at least, is the traditional wisdom. But it is not adequate to our time. . . . Today the distinction between pure and applied science is disappearing with the growth of state power so imperious and technologically competent, that it can transform the most esoteric knowledge into techniques of terror...