Universities and Intellectuals

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  n...