ABSTRACT
In the spirit of Dewey’s Pragmatism, the previous pages have argued for a revisiting of the founding principles of the modern university and the academic profession in order to reassert the democratic imperatives constitutive of the mission of the university and the identity of the faculty. Like the enactments of American democracy, the university and the faculty often adapted to conditions in ways that served more immediate needs but that had harmful enduring and far-reaching effects. Our challenge now is to employ Pragmatic sensibility to new sets of problems and to fi nd new responses to improve the American university’s and faculty’s common capacity to work against those habits that have
undermined their liberal mission and purposes. Having identifi ed the basic principles and concepts of the ideology and cultural forces responsible for the current state of the American university and its faculty, the fi rst place to begin transformation is with philosophical change.
