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ALLAN BLOOM'S MESSAGE TO THE STALE UNIVERSITIES Allan Bloom is fond of saying that he wrote his best-selling book, The Closing of the American Mind, for six thousand of his closest friends, and that if he had known that it would be as popular as it turned out to be he might have written parts of it differently. Whether or not that is true, it is clear that the book has excited both friend and foe. Of more than one hundred fifty reviews, few praised the book without also heaping ample measures of blame upon it. Perhaps the success of the book is due, in no small measure, to the extraordinary extent of the attention that it gained from the reviewing press. The reviewing press seems to be more interested in a book that is infuriating than in one that is soothing. Bloom has touched some very sensitive nerves. He has been labeled racist, elitist, antidemocratic, and anti-American. The elitism and antidemocracy in Bloom, according to the critics, exists in his belief that philosophy is superior to other academic disciplines; that some students are more worthy of educating than others; and some universities are "great," whereas others are not. Dannhauser points out that Bloom has been accused of idealism, sexism, racism, elitism, Straussianism, esoteric writing, sloppy writing, absolutism, making scapegoats of students, ignorance of professional philosophy, un-Americanism, failure to understand rock music, pessimism, uncritical advocacy of the Great Books, bad scholarship, and neglect of religion.( n1) To this list of sins might be added lack of prudence, too much irony, too little irony, disorganization, and success. It is interesting to find favorable reviews of the book in the popular magazines Readers Digest and Esquire, not noted for their concern about deeply intellectual subjects. Perhaps reflecting the concern of many of their readers, they sense that all is not well in American higher education, and find what they imagine to be Bloom's arguments attractive and persuasive. It is disturbing to find that the vast majority of the reviews of Bloom's book are quite uncritical. Most make a feeble attempt at summarizing the book, sometimes note that it is hard to read, and attempt no analysis or evaluation. The great majority of those reviews that do attempt some evaluation are quite superficial. Few attempt to understand the whole book; there is little analysis

of the themes and arguments throughout; and these reviews offer few reasoned conclusions about those arguments. It should not be surprising that The Closing of the American Mind has stimulated so much comment, mostly negative and superficial. The theme of the book--something is wrong with American society and especially with American education--strikes a responsive chord in the American heart. People who hold opinions across the political spectrum can agree that something is wrong. Whether they finally agree with Bloom's conclusions or not, they find his attempts to say what is wrong interesting and provocative. The first part of Bloom's book contains unnecessarily mean-spirited remarks that do not add to the worth of the main arguments. Indeed, they detract from the principal theme and diminish the effect of the serious arguments made in the second and third sections of the book. This imprudence allows reviewers to focus upon small points and ignore large ones. They have tended to choose the easy targets rather than the difficult arguments for attack. Of those who do understand the full argument of the book, many are offended by Bloom's devastating indictment of some rather fondly held values. Those things that Bloom criticizes are taken by many to be the very characteristics about American society that are most praiseworthy. Bloom's book is complex, less coherent than one might wish it to be, and riddled with controversial assertions with which reviewers can distract attention. There is, nevertheless, a central argument that is compelling and provocative. It is an argument about the decline of the intellectual foundations of Western civilization. The decline has not taken place through simple neglect nor through the inevitable evolution of historical world cultures, but has been the result of an erosion of the Socratic tradition within modern philosophy. That erosion has been the result of deliberate attack upon the idea that the highest life consists in the pursuit of truth, and the substitution of the idea that truth itself is relative to history and culture. The arena of that attack has been the European university and its successor, the American university. We are all the ultimate victims, but the immediate victims have been the students within these universities who have been denied their right to free inquiry. The result is present in all of society, but is best exemplified by the inability of even the best universities to constitute themselves as coherent wholes, to focus systematically upon the examination of fundamental questions, and to guarantee an atmosphere of free and vigorous inquiry. This is a book ostensibly about the destruction of the university; in reality, the book is about the destruction of Western civilization. THE BOOK Because of its complexity and organization, the book can be read in various ways. The conventional American approach is to expect the building of an argument from the beginning with a culmination at the end. Indeed, the book has evidently been read in this manner by many of the. reviewers. For whatever reasons, several of them have evidently not read or not comprehended much beyond the first part of the book. In that first part, Bloom describes and evaluates the life of the student in the contemporary American university, and especially the intellectual life of students in the twenty or thirty best universities in North America. He finds the condition of these students to be alarming indeed. Most alarming is their total acceptance of value relativism and their rejection of the pursuit of truth as appropriate or useful. This first part of the book, entitled simply "Students," is the most superficial of the three parts and is therefore easiest for the casual reader. Precisely because it comes first in organization, and discusses matters closest to common consciousness, it can and has brought many readers to a simplistic misunderstanding of the entire work. If Bloom is correct in his later arguments, he should not be

surprised that many readers seemed not to progress beyond the assertions of the first part of the book, and therefore easily dismissed the entire work as mean-spirited and wrong-headed. If the first part of the book is superficially available to everyone to interpret, the second part of the book is profoundly complex and difficult to comprehend. No wonder then that so many reviewers seem confused about this part of the book, or simply give up trying to make any sense of it at all. But here in this second part of the book is the essential argument about the decline of the West. It is entitled "Nihilism, American Style," but it focuses upon America only secondarily. The middle part of the book is primarily a review and an analysis of the way in which European (and especially German) philosophers have overturned the ancient idea that civil society is a natural thing and substituted the opposite idea, that the polity is a defensive convention. It reviews the evolution of the destruction of the idea that the attempt to discover truth and falsehood is the most important of intellectual pursuits. Openness and commitment, contemporary democratic emotional virtues, have replaced free inquiry. Within the universities, the idea of knowledge as a unity has been rejected, leaving the natural sciences aloof and isolated from humanities and social sciences. Culture has replaced polity as a focus of study, and anthropology replaces political science as the center of inquiry about mankind. The first part of Bloom's book reveals his not-too-complimentary view of society as it is. The second part makes an argument about how we got to this sorry state of life. The third part of the book focuses upon American universities as the principal arena of our decline, and holds some faint hope that it may be the arena of restored sensibilities. Following his understanding of Tocqueville's teaching about democracy's tendency to discourage "vigorous independence of mind," Bloom suggests that it is especially important to have in that form of polity a university tradition that encourages the open challenge of ideas. When the intellectual and emotional conventions of the majority of society intrude upon and control the activity of universities, free inquiry will suffer. In a democracy, more perhaps than in any nontotalitarian form of civil society, the university must function to "preserve the freedom of the mind." The university no longer serves that function in America, and so American society is in grave danger. Bloom argues that the destruction of the American university began and developed in Europe, in the manner that he describes in the second part of the book. The destructive force unleashed during the Enlightenment finally brought the German universities to great harm in the 1930s and now has badly damaged American universities as well. During the late 1960s, the idea of aloofness of the university from society was utterly destroyed in America. By joining society, and allowing itself to be fully engaged in the struggles of the immediate, the university gave up its ability to protect free inquiry and those who would freely inquire. Because this vital function is no longer being performed by the American universities, liberal democracy itself is in danger in the United States. THE BOOK: PART THREE Although part 2 of the book is by far the most important, because it discusses the decline of Western civilization, part 3, "The University," is the culmination of the argument. What happened to philosophy in Europe was manifest in the universities. What happened in European universities in the 1930s happened to universities in North America in the 1960s. Part 3 of the book is, in some ways, a simpler and more focused version of the complex argument found in part 2. In it Bloom tells the story of the specific connection between the fate of the universities and of philosophy. It is at this point in Bloom's argument that the responsive chord vibrates in the hearts of many university people. The universities are not in good health, many of us believe. There seems to be

an aimlessness in American higher education. Many colleges and universities seem not to have the distinctive mission of yesterday. The curriculum lacks purpose, it is not comprehensive, and it is devoid of any real coherency. Professors say that students are ill prepared to write a meaningful paragraph, let alone read important books or ask significant questions. Presidents and deans say that faculty have retreated within their disciplinary walls and care too little about the work of colleagues or the fate of the university. Parents say that their children are not learning enough, that the university is not preparing students for careers, and college is costing too much. Legislatures, hearing the parents, say that state universities are too expensive, cannot demonstrate the value that they add to the life of students, and must either reform themselves or accept greater control from the government. Allan Bloom has been concerned about the fate of the university for many years. In this book and elsewhere, he has voiced his concern that the great universities are in precipitous decline. Even some of Bloom's sharpest critics can agree that universities are in trouble, but what is the nature of the trouble? What has caused the trouble? Can we reverse this erosion of the quality and integrity of higher learning. How do we fix it? There is no common understanding about answers to these questions among those would would do the fixing. The lack of will to engage seriously the ills of the university has left many institutions, some believe, adrift and declining into a sad irrelevancy in American life. The popularity of Bloom's book is some indication that it touches general concerns. The book has brought the debate about the fate of higher education to the thinking public in ways that no other book has done for decades. If one follows Bloom's line of reasoning, one might argue that the university is a necessary institution within democratic polities. Because ultimately there are no impediments to the imposition upon democratic society of the preferences of the majority, knowledge of the vital alternatives must be preserved somewhere. The university, if it is mindful of its vital function within democratic society, will assure that the "range of possibilites are accessible" (248) to the people by guaranteeing that the most important questions about what life to live and how to function within a polity are asked constantly and seriously. In order that the university be formed so as to encourage the asking and discussing of important questions, its curriculum must reflect and preserve the unity of knowledge, and it must discourage and resist the separation of inquiry into ever more discrete boxes. The formalization of that separation into academic disciplines and its imprisonment in academic departments is a mere convenience that has become a barrier to the proper pursuit of truth. In part 3 of the book, Bloom suggests that the tension between society and philosophy is as old as political philosophy itself, as the life and death of Socrates demonstrates. The Enlightenment claimed to resolve that conflict through education--to make all men reasonable. The alternating reconciliation and reassertion of this tension between philosophy and society evolves through the writings of Rousseau and Kant, coming finally to be understood in an opposite way from Socrates. Bloom explains the new thinking this way: "Kant accepted Rousseau's reasoning that freedom must be what distinguishes man, . . . and that therefore the practical life, the exercise of moral freedom, is higher than the theoretical life...." (300) After Rousseau and Kant, the human sciences and the natural sciences became permanently separated in the university. Natural science became the study of verifiable truth--the "is," while human science, in the form of morals and esthetics, became the study of speculative truth--the "ought." That separation of the sciences was institutionalized in the German universities. Philosophy was now separated from natural science, and the philosophic life was no longer seen as the best life. Indeed the philosophic life was now viewed, not as the culmination of the

essence of human existence, but, to the contrary, as quite groundless. Bloom remembers Goethe's Faust "meditating in his cell, translat(ing) the first line of the Gospel According to John, 'In the beginning was the word (logos)'; then, dissatisfied with the description he says 'the feeling,' which also does not quite do; finally and definitively he chooses to reinterpret it as 'the deed.' Action has primacy over contemplation, deed over speech." (303) The historian is the "chronicler of deeds," and, thus becomes the most important scholar. Deeds themselves, however, become far more important than the telling of stories about deeds. Thus the scholarly life, in even its new form, becomes a life of secondary importance. Socrates is overturned here. It was left to Nietzsche and Heidegger, Bloom tells us, finally to destroy the university that the philosophers of the Enlightenment had created. The making and living of culture, not the chronicling of deeds nor the asking of great questions, now becomes the doing of the universities, and especially German universities. The creativity of the poets leads closer to truth than the rigor of scientists or philosophers. Thus, Homer is the Greek to be studied and admired more than Socrates. As Bloom says, when this new perspective came to influence the German universities, "artists received a new license, and even philosophy began to reinterpret itself as a form of art. The poets won the old war between philosophy and poetry, in which Socrates had been philosophy's champion." (309) The university, built to be the haven of philosophy by the thinkers of the Enlightenment, was now rejecting its founders. The questions of philosophy are now replaced by the answers of ideology. The search for truth is replaced by an assertion that truth is relative to culture and historical circumstance. There are many truths, and they are transitory. The university, in the Germany of the twentieth century, became, not the critic of society, but its instrument. Ultimately the German university became a tool of national socialism. "The university began in spirit from Socrates' contemptuous and insolent distancing of himself from the Athenian people, . . . The University may have come near to its death when Heidegger . . . put philosophy at the service of German culture." (311) With the coming of Hitler and national socialism to the Germany of the 1930s, and with its attendant casting out of philosophy, many of Germany's great thinkers came to America and peopled its universities. North America benefited greatly by their coming, but they brought with them the great schismatic debate of Europe, and this led in the 1960s to a confrontation that nearly destroyed the great universities of America in the same way that the universities of Germany were nearly destroyed in the 1930s. It is irrelevant, says Bloom, that the enemies of free inquiry in Germany came from the far right and in America from the far left. Like the German universities of the 1930s, the American universities of the 1960s became the timid victims of a society caught up in an ideology, and they were nearly destroyed. The primacy of free inquiry was overwhelmed; the understanding of the unity of knowledge was cast aside; the coherence of the curriculum was lost. The ideology of immediate society replaced free inquiry; a "cafeteria" approach to the "liberal" part of the curriculum became accepted in almost all American colleges. The universities lost an understanding of what it meant to be a university. IMPLICATIONS FOR HIGHER EDUCATION The message that Bloom intends for the great universities is clear. Whether the prescription for a return to greatness is likely is an open question. That such universities can become "great" again is a matter for him to comment upon in other forums or for his readers to debate. The focus here is not upon the fate of the "great" universities, but upon the message to all colleges and universities, and especially to the state universities, that can be derived from a reading of Bloom. Of most particular concern here are not the state universities with law, and engineering, and medical and veterinarian schools, the schools that became the "flagship" state universities, those

that now are often referred to as "major research state universities," the ones that receive the bulk of federal research grant largesse, whose faculty produce much of the disciplinary literature, whose freshmen are principally taught by graduate students, and whose sports teams are the tails so often wagging the dogs. Out of sight in Bloom's book are those state universities to which, in his childhood, friends went to become teachers. Called normal schools in those days, they later evolved into state colleges. Beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, these former teachers colleges, whether ready or not, were anointed as "Comprehensive State Universities."( n2) It is in such institutions that this writer has spent the past twenty years as a teacher and an academic administrator. The constant concern of many good people in the comprehensive universities has been to encourage continuous improvement of the university in an environment truly hostile to progress, to support a persistent raising of the quality of what is done as resources to do good things are diminished, to join academic colleagues in demanding much of ourselves and our students at a time when the search for knowing has been so utterly replaced by the search for financial success. Reading in this bleak setting Bloom's book about the decline of Western civilization, and the destruction of the university, one asks what insights there are in the book that might help any university be a better place in which to help students educate themselves. Bloom's book, both directly and by implication, has something to say not only to those who live in the "great universities" but perhaps equally to those who spend their productive lives in the comprehensive state colleges and universities. The first and most fundamental question raised by Bloom is that which asks about the very meaning of "the university. " He shows that in a democracy the university serves the essential function of being a haven for free inquiry. This function, it may be taken, is one shared by all good universities, not just the "great" ones. If the pursuit of truth through free inquiry is the core purpose of any university or general college, then it is essential that the faculty, administrators, and governing boards of such institutions ask themselves the question as to whether an atmosphere conducive to free inquiry exists on their campuses. Can the truth be pursued on our campus, by our students and their faculty, without restraint, intimidation, or discrimination? Is our curriculum and our prevalent method of teaching and learning designed principally to facilitate the pursuit of truth, or do other principles structure the curriculum and dictate how we teach and learn? To say that professors and students should be free to pursue the truth is not to say that all things are equally worthy of inquiry. At the core of the university's responsibility to nurture an atmosphere of free inquiry is the duty to ensure that the most important questions are especially studied. The most important questions are those that have to do with the meaning and quality of life, the definition of the good life and its distinction (if any) from success, the purpose of polity and the responsibilities of government and citizen to improve the polity. From this perspective it might be argued that the university that understands all questions to be equally important, and all answers to be equally valid, does not focus upon its prime responsibility to nurture inquiring minds, to encourage students to confront their own opinions as well as the set of opinions that dominates society at the moment, and to prepare its graduates to function productively as citizens within a polity. In the pursuit of the most important questions, Bloom believes, the experience of contemporary life is but one source of information, although an important source. In addition to mere life experience, however, are the thoughts and writings of those who have made the greatest contribution in the pursuit of truth. These are the great philosophers and political commentators

who have dealt with the central questions about life and how it should be lived. Not every book written, not even every book produced by those who call themselves philosophers or political commentators, makes an equal contribution to understanding. Some books are more important than others and therefore should be read systematically and with special care and seriousness. Thus Bloom presents all university communities with another set of questions. Do we believe, as does Bloom, that the history of inquiry has produced some thinkers and some books that are more important than others? If so, are some of these books so important to our quest for the truth that we want to ensure that our students have had the opportunity to read, analyze, and discuss those books? Are we, the faculty, capable of guiding such inquiry? Do we know how to read and discuss profoundly important books? Bloom's argument about the unity of knowledge presents an interesting dilemma to the university. Although he seems to have little hope that the architectonic vision of the university will ever return, he nevertheless chastises academicians for the reduction and division of university studies, and he argues that at least we should understand that the multiplication of "disciplines" and the proliferation of academic departments have created a university "like the ship on which the passengers are just accidental fellow travelers soon to disembark and go their separate ways. The relations between natural science, social science and humanities are purely administrative and have no substantial intellectual content."( n3) Such an argument raises questions about the existence of a curricular core to the university. Does the university claim some commitment to a curriculum of liberal arts and sciences upon which its various academic majors are based? If it does not make such a claim, can it hope to be anything but a vocational school, much like the state university that Bloom remembers from his youth? If the university does claim a commitment of some sort to a curricular core of liberal arts, does the claim have any serious meaning in the curricular structure of the university? Is the reality of our curriculum a lack of comprehensiveness and coherency? Is our commitment based upon at least a dimly understood image of unified knowledge, or do we define a liberal arts core to our academic majors by offering our students, as Bloom charges, not profound questions and important literature, but a collection of courses from the letters, arts, and sciences from which they may choose, cafeteria style, whatever pleases them? The core of the curriculum that exists in many universities in something called general education. University catalogues would have the reader believe that the general education part of a baccalaureate degree consists of about half of a typical 12(semester-credit degree. In truth, however, many general education programs include several courses designed to teach certain skills to students. Thus, courses on how to write, how to speak, and how to calculate at some minimum level are often included in the general education portion of the program, thus diminishing it further from its liberality. And this reductive trend continues. Most recently, courses in "critical thinking" have been added to the skill portion of the general education program. Beyond this reduction, through a practice of specifying acceptable "electives," the generalizing part of college education has become an extension of the academic major curriculum. Students in many colleges and universities are left with a trifling rather than an important introduction to liberal studies. Often, the "breadth" or "content" portion of the general education program consists of a requirement that the student choose from a staggering array of courses a few in each of the three major divisions of the university liberal arts offerings. In such a system there is no guarantee that the student even will be introduced to liberal studies in some coherent way. There is almost never any understanding that this meager liberal experience should be

organized around the study of the most profound questions. And so, the reduction that is called general education is itself reduced. The general education curriculum, is, in Bloom's view, a virtual fraud perpetrated upon the student who does not even know that something is missing. In colleges and universities across the country there is a very uneasy feeling about that vestige of the liberal arts called general education. The papers and journals of higher education abound with advertisements about conferences and seminars on "the reform of general education." Colleges and universities appear to be tinkering with the general education curricula constantly, but there seems to be a persistent sense of dissatisfaction with the results. Bloom is not surprised about such a condition. He believes that faculty understands at least vaguely that the reforms of the 1960s destroyed coherence and focus in general education. The results of radical destructuring of general education curricula that took place at that time finally have produced, according to this view, a longing for something better. And the students are dissatisfied also. Bloom observes that many of them find very little relevance to their own goals in the general education curriculum. As he puts it, general education, presently structured, "teaches that there is no high-level generalism, and that what they [the students] are doing is preliminary to the real stuff and part of the childhood they are leaving behind. Thus they desire to get it over with and get on with what their professors do seriously." (343) If Bloom is correct in his argument that a fundamental change took place in the 1960s in the general education curriculum, the considerable tinkering with a flawed structure will not make it right. Therefore, faculty and administrators in colleges and universities might ask themselves whether or not the accumulation of credits in three or four major areas of the letters, arts, and sciences is a flawed concept upon which to base a liberating educational experience. Further, if we give students the option to choose rather freely from perhaps hundreds of course options in fulfilling the present general education requirements, can we hope for any coherence in the general studies of the average student? Bloom would have us adopt another approach. Just allow our students to read some great literature. Walk with them through this great literature, constantly asking important questions about being, living with others, and helping to govern. This disarmingly simple approach to the liberal part of a student's college education is, for public colleges, perhaps too radical a solution to our present confusion about general education, but it does not follow that nothing can be done to improve the situation. At the very least, the indictment of general education by Bloom, and many others who do not necessarily embrace his solution to the problem, might lead us to raise some additional important questions, not only about general education, but about the entire curriculum. A serious look at baccalaureate education at each college and university is an introspective exercise that might have some intrinsic rewards and would result, it is hoped, in reestablishing some purpose and focus to undergraduate studies. What is it that every student who graduates from our university should know and be able to accomplish and have experienced? How do we go about guaranteeing to students the intellectual experiences that we believe important? How do we know if we are meeting the goals that we have set for undergraduate education? If general education is the most important part of the "liberal arts core" of which we so often speak, precisely what is it that is liberating about our present curriculum? What do we wish general education to accomplish for the student? What principles should guide the structure of general education? If university faculty can ask themselves the important conceptual questions about general education, perhaps they can begin to set goals for the curriculum and establish criteria for the inclusion of particular courses.

Throughout the entire book, but most compellingly in the third section, Bloom makes fascinating and provocative comments about the relationship between society and the university. He believes that a major weakness of the contemporary American university is that the relationship between it and society has become too close. He asks us to remember that in a democracy such as the United States, there is a special need for a certain aloofness of the university from the current ideology and the political issues. There must be a place where students and faculty are free to inquire, regardless of the opinion of the current societal majority. The university is more about asking questions than it is about stating answers. Professor Bloom believes that this separation of university and society has been eroding in the United States since the Second World War, but most especially since the middle of the 1960s. What happened in the 1960s, according to Bloom, is that society came to control universities in direct, immediate, and destructive ways. Those issues that excited the people intruded upon the campus. In the name of antiwar, antiracism, antisexism, and antielitism, professors and presidents of universities were persuaded or intimidated to conform to the demands of the immediate anger of society. Students and other citizens were allowed to disrupt and sometimes halt the normal operation of academic programs. Professors were threatened by students and criticized (sometimes disciplined) by administrators for teaching and saying certain things. Curricula were altered to reflect new societal priorities. The criteria for hiring professors were changed so as to diversify the faculty. The net effect of all these things, according to this argument, was to diminish seriously the ability and willingness of the universities to hold themselves above current issues. Free inquiry about important subjects was smothered. It is fair to say that, not only since the 1960s but at various times in the history of American higher education, serious debate has been stimulated around the question of whether (or how much) the universities should be responsive to the currently expressed desires or needs of the greater society. Those academics who remember or have studied the history of higher education can point to the effects upon universities produced by the loyalty controversies of the late 1940s and 1950s. Even if one substantially agrees with Bloom about the destructiveness of the 1960s, one might argue that the universities were substantially weakened and made vulnerable in the 1950s. Beyond this, higher education historians can point to other earlier controversies about society and government control over universities, especially public universities. Surely it is fair to ask questions now about the propriety of such relationships in the 1990s. If it is accepted that a dominant function of the university is to encourage and guide students to educate themselves, and further if it is accepted that the best such education can take place only in an atmosphere that promotes free inquiry, then it is both interesting and necessary to ask the question: Should universities and colleges be compelled to be instruments of societal imperatives and political change? Does the imposition upon the university of social and political policy such as anticommunism, antifascism, antiracism, antisexism, and other democratic issues, unduly restrict the necessary exercise of free inquiry? In other words, do universities have an absolute obligation to be "good citizens" in the ways that society may define that phrase at the moment? Or, to the contrary, do they have an obligation to be subversive organizations? The fundamental question to be asked about the relationship between society and university is whether we agree with Bloom that free inquiry within the university is really necessary in a democratic (or other) form of polity. If we agree with Bloom, then must we hold free inquiry as the only absolute principle for the university to follow? If the answer is yes, then, far from assuming that certain questions have been answered and are no longer grist for the mill of

inquiry, we must assume instead that nothing is self-evident within a good university, not even that "all men are created equal." IMPLICATIONS FOR PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES This is an especially fascinating if particularly thorny question for public universities. The people own public universities. The representatives of the people are the legislatures. Legislators have an obligation, it might be argued, to see to it that the "good faith and credit" of the state is protected. If people and legislature are concerned about free inquiry only to the extent that its presence aids in preparing students for prospering within the economy, is the interest of the university and the interest of the overseers of the university inevitably in conflict? If such a tension is inevitable, or even if it is likely to occur, one may wonder whether it is the obligation of academic leaders to engage their legislative masters in a discussion about the meaning of the university. Anyone who has long experience in public university administration does not open a discussion with the legislature casually. One never knows what wonderful or horrible actions might emerge from such a discussion. On the other hand, one might speculate as to whether, in freeing the university, and protecting it from the waves of societal preference, academic people might, as Socrates did, cultivate those in society who, for their own private purposes, are supportive of learning in general, are friendly to the efforts of universities to teach, and can be influential in the public debate that surrounds the universities. In other words, should educators cultivate those modern equivalents of "the gentlemen" "who have money and hence leisure and can appreciate the beautiful and useless...." (279) A discussion among academic people about public relations and influence would surely produce much discomfort. Perhaps it cannot be justly asserted that the pursuit of truth begins with discomfort about present convention, but it may be fairly argued that stripping away the delusions about the self-evident worth of the university in which some academics have wrapped themselves may lead to a more productive engagement with important questions about the purpose of their work. A related question goes to the issue of the mission of the public university. Bloom addresses in a clear way, whether the reader agrees with his conclusion or not, the general mission of universities. He particularly focuses upon that class of institutions that he calls great universities and finds them having betrayed their mission. He does not discuss the mission of the major state universities except to dismiss this as akin to vocational-technical schools, and comprehensive state universities are quite absent from his concern. Thus, if one is to be informed from Bloom's book about the mission of such universities, it is through implication. The important implication to be drawn from Bloom that may inform readers who are concerned about comprehensive state universities is that they, like faculty in all colleges and universities, need to ask themselves very serious questions about their purpose for existing as a discrete institution of higher schooling. What are the distinctive functions that this university fulfills, if any? Bloom implies strongly that he believes there to be a separation of functions among colleges and universities. It may be that some of the problems facing comprehensive public universities in the 1990s are created from earlier decisions that blur the distinctive functions of different kinds of institutions of higher learning. The mission of the predecessors of the contemporary American comprehensive "regional" universities were, for the most part, once clear. They are no longer clear. The relative clarity of the original mission of the comprehensive depends upon, to some extent, when they were founded. It is only a slight oversimplification to assert that the older a school is, the clearer was its original mission. For many institutions now called comprehensive or regional

state universities, the original mission was to train teachers. They began as academies, mostly in rural places. These "normal schools" were founded in the middle to late nineteenth century, and functioned for several decades as two- and three-year schools that combined liberal arts education and pedagogical training for future teachers. After the Second World War these institutions underwent a genuine crisis of identity. There occurred then a huge and sudden increase in the demand for baccalaureate education. The national government, responding as best it could to that demand, made a massive commitment to the expansion and the generalization of public higher education. That commitment continued throughout the 1950s, stimulated by the Korean War and the alarm over Soviet advances in space technology. These institutions were transformed from teacher training schools and specialized academies into general liberal arts-oriented undergraduate state colleges. Again in the early to mid-1960s, the daughters and sons of those World War Two and Korean veterans began to fill the public academic institutions. The demand for accessibility to higher education for all of the people was at its apex. There was a new expansion of plant and programs, establishing a base for later high fixed costs that began to plague public colleges in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Also, during the 1960s these general undergraduate colleges began to expand their professional or vocational programs and to enter graduate education in an aggressive way. The model for organization and development became the one established by the prestigious private universities, but most especially by the very large public research-oriented universities in which many of the new college faculty were being trained. One does not need to agree with all of Bloom's conclusions about the destructive effects upon colleges produced by the 1960s to believe, nevertheless, that the United States seemed to lose its national bearings during that decade, and that the state colleges and universities were caught up in that trouble. The cries of "Hell, no, we won't go!" and "Burn baby burn" were joined with "We shall overcome" to make a volatile mixture of disillusionment and alienation. This happened, not just at Bloom's Cornell, not just at the "great" universities, but in all types of institutions in all parts of the United States. The trouble that brewed in the late 1960s was viewed in a superficial way by the colleges and universities. The disruptive events beginning in the late 1960s, and continuing through to the end of the Vietnam War, were conditions to survive. Cornell, Kent State, the University of Wisconsin, and other places were where fires had to be extinguished. Very little concern was given to the important long-term effects of the 1960s because faculty and administrators were consumed with trying to cope with the immediate manifestations of important societal problems. Bloom believes that some fatal mistakes were made by university administrators during those times. It was only when enrollments began to decline, first in the Northeast, and later in other parts of the nation, that the rising fixed costs of public institutions began to draw the unfavorable attention of the public. It was only after the "accountability" movement began to focus, not just upon the schools but also upon colleges, that the weakened condition of higher education became apparent. It was only after changes in the economy made it abundantly clear that a college degree did not guarantee a job, that even the base utilitarian argument for public colleges was seriously weakened. Demographics, economics, and disenchantment with the old justifications for low-cost universal public higher education have combined to create a very hostile environment for many comprehensive public universities. The public no longer assumes that higher education is intrinsically good. It demands that faculty and administrators be accountable for what they do. The colleges are, for the first time in the memories of most of those who work there, called upon

to justify their existence. The public has come to see higher education as costing too much and delivering too little. The comprehensive public universities now need to renew themselves. They cannot go back to a mission that was simple and known. They have failed, for the most part, to reach the ideal that they pursued in the past. The comprehensive state universities do not have a clear mission at a time when the hostility of the environment demands some clarity of purpose. The quest for a definition of mission may begin with the questions that Bloom's book has suggested for this essay. The process of examining these questions, and the focus upon fundamental things that that examination necessitates, will define the limits of mission and build its content. Is the university a place in which free inquiry is protected and encouraged? Does the university understand its relationship with the greater society, and is it comfortable with that relationship? Is the university organized around the principle that knowledge is a unity? Does the faculty join students in rigorous pursuit of the most fundamental questions? Are the students encouraged to read and discuss important books? Is the curriculum reflective of a significant commitment to the liberal arts? Is there a comprehensiveness and a coherency to that curriculum? Is the general education component of the curriculum a significant part of the student's experience? The mission is further defined through answering questions about proper balances. What is the proper balance between the liberal part of the curriculum and the vocational or professional parts of that curriculum? For a given university, what is the proper balance between the functions of teaching, scholarship, and service to the profession and the community? What is the proper relationship between graduate and undergraduate education? What is the proper balance, if any, between the characteristics of students: citizen and foreign, male and female, achievement, race, major, and so forth? What are the programs of distinction, if any, for which the university in question wishes to be known? Among the provocations of Allan Bloom's book, perhaps the most important is the provocation to think about ourselves as academic people, to question the mission of our institution and universities like ours, and to determine to engage each other in meaningful debate. If Allan Bloom can stimulate such a reaction, even those who find this book to be most distasteful can salute him. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The author is indebted to Professor Patricia Ainsworth for her assistance and advice on the first section of the article. NOTES (n1.) Werner Dannhauser, "Allen Bloom and the Critics," American Spectator 1988, 18. All subsequent page citations are to this reference. (n2.) The small section of this article regarding the mission of state comprehensive universities is taken from an earlier address by the writer to the Academic Affairs Resource Center. (n3.) Dannhauser, op. cit. 350. All subsequent page citations are to this reference. BIBLIOGRAPHY Anastaplo, G. 1989. Allan Bloom and race relations in the United States. In Essays on "The Closing of the American Mind," edited by R. L. Stone. Chicago Review Press. Anastaplo, G. 1989. In re Allan Bloom: A respectful dissent. In Essays on "The Closing of the American Mind, " edited by R. L. Stone. Chicago Review Press. Armistead, W. S. 1988. Education Secretary William Bennett and author Allan Bloom. Conservative Digest 14 (April): 25-32.

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Smith, A. 1987. Writing to sell in the MTV era. Esquire 108(December): 87, 89, 91. Sobran, J. 1987. Sammler's complaint. National Review 39(April): 51-53. Sofer, A. 1987. Cultural collision. The Times Educational Supplement October: 96. Spaeth, R. L. 1988. Abrasive but hopeful. College Teaching 36[ 2](Spring): 86-87. Standley, F. 1988. William Bennett, Allan Bloom, E. D. Hirsch, Jr.: Great nature has another thing to do to you and me . . . Teaching English in Two-Year Colleges December: 266-76. Todorov, T. 1987. The philosopher and the everyday. The New Republic 197(September): 34-37. Urban, W. J. 1988. Book Reviews The Journal of American History 75(December): 869-75. Van Scotter, R. 1988. Books. Social Education 52[7](November/ December): 539-40. Weisberg, J. 1987. Sex and drugs and Heidegger. The Washington Monthly 19(September): 49-53. Williams, J. B. 1987. [Review of The Closing . . . ] Perspective 16(May/June): 106. Wilshire, B. 1988. Bloom, Hirsch, Jacoby: What do their books mean for higher education (particularly in theatre)? Performing Arts Journal 11: 7-13. Wilson, R. A policy-studies and 'Great Books' center set up by Bennett and curriculum critic. Chronicle of Higher Education 34(September): A26, 28. Winn, I. J. 1989. Retrospective on the closing of the American mind: Allan Bloom's follies. Educational Horizons. Fall/Winter: 3-5. Wolfe, A. 1988. Allan Bloom. Partisan Review 55: 156-59. Wolff, R. P. 1987. [Review of The Closing . . . ] Academe September-October: 64-65. Wood, J. 1988. There's a degree of truth in that. Punch September: 37-38. Wright, E. 1987. America's state of mind. Contemporary Review 251(0ctober): 221-22. Wright, R. L. 1988. [Review of The Closing . . . ] The Journal of Negro Education 57(Winter): 119-21. Wrong, D. H. 1988. The paperbacking of the American mind. The New York Times Book Review 93(April): 1, 20, 22-24. Zappa, F. 1988. On junk food for the soul. New Perspectives Quarterly Winter: 26-29. Zwering, L. S. 1987. [Review of The Closing . . . ] Choice 25(September): 189-90. ~~~~~~~~By ROBERT V. EDINGTON Robert V. Edington, who received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Washington, is provost and academic vice-president of Central Washington University. He is the author of a book on international relations.

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ReferencesEdington, R. V. (1990). Allan Bloom's message to the state universities. Perspectives On Political Science, 19(3), 136.