Word: lipset
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...connection is this: the unprecedented extremism of recent student radicalism is seen by Lipset as an attack on the very academic freedom that provided the source for the liveliness of intellectual thought and political activity at Harvard. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, Harvard had fostered an "academic culture" that promoted scholarship for scholarship's sake, intellectual research relatively free of social constraint, and a solemn respect for creative academic thought. Because of its commitment to this ideal (and to a lesser extent, according to Lipset's analysis, because of its access to influence and financial resources), Harvard came...
...order to demonstrate his thesis, Lipset reviews 338 years of Harvard history--mostly through a synthesis of secondary accounts--to show that Harvard indeed has had its share of political controversies and that the principles of academic freedom were often called upon by professional scholars in Cambridge to protect the integrity of independent thought from meddling governing boards and other non-academically oriented groups. Lipset's historical narrative is not altogether satisfactory, but its reliance on captivating details at least provides for enjoyable reading...
...Lipset divides political activity into several categories. First, there are internal power-struggles between governing boards, administrators and academics. Second, he recounts numerous philosophically based disputes over educational policy. Early on in Harvard's history these disputes were religiously oriented pitting traditional Congregationalists against the more liberal Unitarians. In later years, the fights centered on whether the University should be primarily concerned with training and indoctrinating young minds or with providing the proper conditions for the production of new knowledge. Third, Lipset describes various student rebellions--over issues ranging from the quality of butter served in the dining comments...
...point of Lipset's lengthy account of Harvard politics is to show that political controversy has always been part and parcel of academic life, and should be understood as such. He suggests that this, was and is the case precisely because of the awesome intellectual freedom that the University encouraged. Lipset does not repudiate this political activity; at best he is somewhat proud of it and at worst he suggests it is a reasonable price to pay for intellectual vitality. But what does all this have to do with the student radicalism of the 1960s...
...Lipset, to give in to the "anti-intellectualism" of the new student politics, to compromise or waver in the face of its challenge, is intolerable. Capitulation of any sort--and Lipset suggests that such capitulation did take place after the Bust of University Hall--would strike something of a death blow to the very idea of Harvard...