ABSTRACT
In the preceding chapters we have visited a number of idiosyncratic factors that explain how the American university succeeded where Humboldt failed. These factors attest to the important role of the American university’s embeddedness in specific institutional conditions and its reliance on specific social actors that were absent from most other parts of the world. Embeddedness is an awkward term describing the phenomenon that institutions depend on a rich social environment made up of other institutions and the shared norms and beliefs particular to them.1 They cannot be understood without this context-as little as words can convey meaning without a rich context of other words. But just as languages do not seamlessly translate one into another, neither do these social contexts seamlessly mirror each other. The norms, beliefs, and institutions that gave rise to the American university are deeply local in nature. It’s an environment where scholars and businessmen and women don’t shun each other and where Ivory Towers remain open to the public. Nobody engineered these norms, nor is anyone likely to succeed if they tried to import them elsewhere. Yet, from these local roots sprang an institution that has become a global icon.
