The Greening of the University

Remember when the university was called an “ivory tower”? Bookish college presidents? Absentminded professors? Befuddled students? These types belong to a distant, perhaps mythic, past. Today no one charges that college presidents are too scholarly, that professors wander about in a fog, or that students know nothing about the “real world.”

More than quaint images have faded; the reality that sustains them crumbles. Many believe it is fine, that the version (and...