"Diversity" is the theme of most of the coverage, since President Gay is black. She is also a child of immigrants from Haiti (recall); her father was an engineer; she graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy, the elite prep school, and Stanford University, earning her Ph.D. at Harvard. What really struck me, and would concern me were I a faculty member at Harvard, was this:
“The idea of the ivory tower, that is the past, not the future, of academia,” she said. “We don’t exist outside of society, but as part of it, and that means that Harvard has a duty to lean in and engage and be in service to the world.”
Harvard certainly has played a major role in sustaining class hierarchy in America, although that is perhaps not what she means. But universities have no "dut[ies] to lean in and engage and be in service to the world": they have duties to produce knowledge and share it with students. That is their only service, their raison d'etre. I conclude with an anecdote I've shared before:
The late Bill Powers told me this story--he was Dean of the Law School at the University of Texas at Austin, and then President of the University. The "Commission of 125" of the University of Texas convened in the early 2000s, it was made up of academics and alumni, who issued a report about the University's future. The academics thought the mission of the university should be the good of the community and society, and blather like that--the analogue of today's anti-racism blather. It was the alumni, the business leaders and the like, who had to push back and say: no, the goal of the university is to be a great university, great at teaching and research. In fact, the University of Texas at Austin is now an even better university than it was in 2004. It has improved the undergraduate experience and enhanced the status of its graduate programs and faculty. It focused on the goals for a university.
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