Word: reformations
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...true." As for himself, he said, "I am giving up proving my orthodoxy to the Vatican. I have, now, no further desire to do so." Though loyal to basic church doctrine, and to the church's role as a caretaker of Western civilization, Illich is convinced that social reform in Latin America must come from outside the church. Consequently, he will remain at Cuernavaca -even though that means continuing in a lay status while observing the celibacy of a priest...
Unfair to the Poor. The argument has, in fact, been raging for several years. In 1966, Congress passed the Bail Reform Act, which enables federal judges to release a man without bail when a check into his background indicates that he can be counted on not to run away before his trial. But a large number of those freed on bail (estimates in different studies vary from 8% to 45%) have become repeaters even before they come to trial. Some felons, say the authorities, rob a second time in order to pay a lawyer to defend them on the first...
...ignores the radicals to attack the "sensible students" who request participation in making curriculum, promoting instructors, setting fees, and vetoing investments. According to Barzun, their secret will is not so much to run things as to toss them around. Most of their half-baked reforms are "reactionary," already anticipated and found unworkable by administrators. Often the next class of student activists would decide to reform the reforms or bring back the status quo. He does not cite any examples in support of this view, but goes on to conclude that a large establishment like the American university cannot change itself...
...composed "an army of tramps, spongers, and hoodlums." What distinguishes the violence of the present generation is the relative calm that immediately preceded it and the laxity, or cowardice, with which the faculty and administrators respond to it. Compared to the rebels of the thirties, who set out to reform society with a plan, the rebels of the sixties are aimless hedonists...
Since there is self-criticism and the memory of better ways, perhaps the university can reform itself. Barzun is doubtful. The universities must reform together, but the competition for money and prestige has carried scholarly individualism out of control. The "new university" will try to get "newer and newer," larger and larger, until the parts drop off. Newman's vital idea, the spiritual necessity of a center, has failed. The university has become a crossroads, not a community. And even as a crossroads, Mr. Barzun predicts, it will soon have no higher function than a traveler's restroom. THOMAS GEOGHEGAN