Universities and Intellectuals

Schools reflect a culture; they do not transform it—Unsigned review, The New Yorker, November 16, 1963.

A university should not be a weather vane, responsive to every variation of popular whim. Universities must at times give society, not what society wants, but what it needs— Abraham Flexner, Universities: American, British, German.

There could not be a sharper contrast. The American consensus is echoed by the New Yorker, which even if it does not wholly approve of the society that exists, speaks nevertheless with the spirit of those who “maintain themselves by the common routine, learn to avoid expectation.” And the voice of intellect comes from Abraham Flexner, historian of American education.

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