Two Things
Reforming the university; revitalizing community
Coffee this Friday, December 22, at the usual time and place.
(1) Constitutional reform for the university: Niall Ferguson was a guest on Russ Roberts’ EconTalk podcast last week discussing free speech on campus. As I summarize in this post, Ferguson says we need to rethink academic governance:
Drawing on the U.S. Constitution as a model, he argues that all universities suffer from the same institutional defect. Each has, in effect, an executive branch (the president, provost, deans) and a legislative branch (university trustees and tenured faculty). But none has a judicial branch—an independent adjudicative body that can consider and rule upon violations of fundamental principles and check the excesses of the first two branches. Even if a university has adopted principles on, say, academic freedom or campus free speech, there’s no way to enforce these principles and ensure they’re upheld.
But the University of Austin (UATX), which Ferguson helped to found, stands as an exception. It has adopted a university constitution expressly modeled on the federal one, complete with an independent “Adjudicative Panel” empowered to hear cases involving constitutional violations. Ferguson hopes “that UATX’s institutional reforms—political disestablishment, protection of individual and associational free speech, separation of powers, and an independent judiciary—will be an example that other universities follow.”
(2) Revitalizing neighborhood life: In his latest book Fragile Neighborhoods, Seth D. Kaplan critiques the geographic patterns of contemporary American community life:
America has moved from a “townshipped” society, in which neighbors regularly communicated and collaborated with each other, to a “networked” one where we communicate with each other impersonally and often transactionally. Churches have not been immune to this move from “townships” to “networks.” Indeed, many newer Christian denominations prefer to use terms like “network” to describe their collaborative endeavors. Other Christians rely on national networks and internet resources for spiritual growth instead of commitments to a particular, limited group of people in their zip code….
Hyper-individualism encourages the formation of personal identities that are performative and fueled by consumption. And some people of faith fall into consumptive ways of thinking about their religious commitments—seeking the latest podcast or concert series as an expression of their faith. American society’s normative lifestyle has shifted, and people of faith must grapple with how that shift has affected their own values.
Drawing on the example of Orthodox Jewish communities, Kaplan argues for a return to embedded, “place-based relationships”:
Christianity also has a long tradition of embedding individuals in geographic communities, and the parish model still exists in American cities, especially for Roman Catholics. But over the last few generations, these bonding mechanisms have thinned out extensively due to secularization, the advance of technology, and greater mobility—weakening the communal nature of Christianity significantly.
A recovery of “[e]mbedded community is not only important to the future of our faiths, but also to the future of our country.”
Hope to see you Friday morning.