ABSTRACT

In this chapter, the author offers a sketch of the principles of governance of the university that ought to be. It returns to the real world, accept such compromises with the ideal as seem unavoidable on even the most optimistic reading of contemporary affairs, and states how the author think a real university in the last third of the twentieth century in America ought to be run. The university is a community devoted to the preservation and advancement of knowledge, to the pursuit of truth, and to the development and enjoyment of man's intellectual powers. The public discourse of the university community is not a mere means to the private activity of research, as John Stuart Mill seems to have thought. The key to the viability even in theory of such a contractual community is of course the first clause—the unanimous agreement on the purposes of the university community.