Word: kerrs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...second great problem, Kerr noted, is the task of creating a "more unified intellectual world," and striving toward the spirit manifest in the medieval "community of masters and students." Knowledge, however, continues to be fragmented, and a "sense of the unity of all knowledge is still a very long way off," Kerr said...
...third problem Kerr, as the president of the nation's largest university, is particularly concerned about is college administration. He is a forceful advocate for decentralization of decision-making power and creative innovation, and urged more cooperation between allied, but now separate, segments of the community. He noted particularly in this regard the current "chasm" between the teaching department and the research institute...
...Kerr reiterated a concern voiced last night that overly-aggressive egalitarian impulses might channel federal funds away from the large universities that have been getting most of it. "How may the contributions of the elite be made clear to the egalitarians; how may an aristocracy of intellect justify itself to a democracy of the common man?" he asked...
...similar vein, Kerr warned that federal subsidies should go to those areas of endeavor that are most vigorous at the time, and most in need of help. He said that "imbalance" has often been conducive to maximum creativity, as when the physical sciences received the large bulk of federal aid after World War II. Kerr asserted that the government must remain flexible in these matters, and cited the biological sciences and the creative arts as two areas that might become increasingly worthy of federal, and university concern...
Returning to another crucial point in his lecture series Kerr said that traditionally great changes in the university have come, as they have come in the recent past, from outside influences. He characterized the collective faculty as an archconservative body, while noting that individual members are often important innovators. The president, he said, should be a mediator working with ideas, eliciting them from his colleagues and "throwing in" his own. He rejected the idea that a university president, whether in regard to educational policy or any other problem, should have a "plan" to be imposed on the faculty and university