Word: truthful
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Their central idea is the truth that a university has a "special mission" in the discovery and transmission of knowledge. A "special mission" is not a specialized function, one among others, as if a university were like a business corporation or a labor union. It is a mission special to itself to challenge the assumptions of our daily routine, including the assumptions that make possible specializations in society and even in the university. To challenge is to rethink, and rethinking requires mastery of the traditions of thought...
What was Harvard defending? The question needs to be asked in each generation. What were valuable truths then and now? In retrospect, truth emerged for me as much from poetic passion as from the disciplined play of science. John Finley became the sulking Achilles and wily Odysseus on the state of Sanders Theatre while Anna Freud Coolly described our unconscious lust on the third floor of Emerson Hall. Archibald MacLeish, zen-like, trying to "know" an apple balanced James Watson's discovery of the double helix. Clyde Kluckholn's exploration of Navaho culture and psyche challenged Wassily Leontieff's analysis...
...truth at Harvard shone from a tarnished setting of cultivated hypocrisy, in contrast to the let-it-all-hang-out confessions of the '70s. Yet, appearances, manners, and feelings are also truths; they can support good, bad, noble, or banal intentions. "A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent," wrote Willian Blake. The issues then, as now, had to do with intention as much as truth, purpose as much as technique, loyalty as much as self-realization...
...everything, P.B.?' a dozen people ask him before lunch. To each, Sykes replies, 'Fine.' He telephones a doctor. A receptionist says the next available appointment is three months distant. Sykes says he has an emergency. 'What seems to be the trouble?' asks the woman. Sykes cannot tell her the truth, for he is certain she is incapable of believing that feet can be switched like umbrellas traded in a restaurant mixup, and will think him mad and dispatch him to psychiatry...
...papers keep saying the dollar is very weak. This is nonsense. The truth is that the dollar is absolutely powerless. I sent one out for a pound of cheese the other day and it was thrown out of the shop for giving itself airs...