ARCHIVE - November, 2001

The Role of Universities in times of Crisis
Tom Mayer, Department of Sociology

I started college in September of 1955 and, since that time, have never left the womb of higher education.  Over these 46 years I have endured five periods of genuine national emergency: the Cuban missile crisis, the Vietnam war, the Persian Gulf war, the bombing of Yugoslavia and, most recently, the September 11 crisis.  During each of these emergencies I have noticed the special role that universities can,  and I think should,  have during times of crisis.  Fulfillment of this special role helps democracy acquire practical substance as opposed to mere rhetorical flourish.

State power looms especially large during times of crisis.  State executives design and implement the main societal responses to a crisis situation.  They control, and often stringently limit, the flow of relevant information.  During times of crisis even a democratic [small d] government discourages dissent and demands virtually unwavering allegiance from its citizens.  Mass media willingly accept limitations that would seem unpalatable during more ordinary times.  Moreover, an aroused and frightened populace typically hungers for and welcomes forceful, even aggressive, leadership.

Decisions that mold the shape of the future occur during times of crises.  Yet crisis conditions rarely facilitate bold and clear sighted thinking about the future.  The tension and uncertainty of a national emergency generate polarized views of the world and reliance upon conventional verities.  The United States, in particular, tends to demonize its current opponents, treating them as embodiments of pure and irredeemable evil.  Such an outlook foments strategic rigidity and automatically eliminates many possible courses of action.

The elimination of alternatives and the strategic rigidity characteristic of government crisis policy requires a thoughtful critique that can evolve into effective opposition.  Of all permanent social institutions, the academy of higher learning is perhaps best suited for propagating such opposition.  For one thing, a university community has the requisite information base.  It contains sufficient knowledge and expertise to challenge the understandings that support government crisis policy.  Just about every university includes a collection of idealistic young people not yet jaded by ubiquitous hypocrisy nor compromised by trying to survive in a very imperfect world.  The time commitments of students and faculty are sufficiently fungible to allow participation in activities of criticism and protest.  Moreover, the liberal culture endemic to the organized pursuit of advanced knowledge tolerates more dissent than is permitted elsewhere in society. 

In all five of the crisis periods mentioned above, I participated in university based protest against state policy.  However, I do not claim the university based critics are always right and the state policy makers are always wrong.  What I do claim is that the institutional foundation for opposition provided by colleges and universities is crucial to a meaningful democracy.  Recognition that such opposition can exist may moderate government crisis policy in the first place.  It surely stimulates different approaches and emboldens alternative elites should the initial state policies fail.  By the same token, democratic institutions stand in very serious peril whenever state power or its allies (e.g. corporate power) infringe upon the freedom or the independence of higher education.

Unfortunately real universities, including our own, are far less diligent in fulfilling these crisis related functions than the above analysis might suggest.  At least initially most university people, like everyone else, support state policy.  Even skeptical students do not automatically become a critical mass.  The idealism of today's students is burdened with much pessimism about the possibility of improving the world through collective action.  Faculty members are not a particularly assertive lot.  Many value the ivory tower precisely for its relative isolation, and most are thoroughly preoccupied with the pursuit of their own careers.  The special role of the university in times of crisis emerges not from the psychology of its inhabitants, but from the structure of the institution.  If a crisis situation persists, these structurally created opportunities for critical expression are eventually seized.  When a sustained and articulate opposition to state crisis policy does emerge, colleges and universities are likely to be at its center.  The crisis we are now living through will not be an exception to this general rule.

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The opinions expressed in these articles are those of the authors, and do not represent those of the Boulder Faculty Assembly, CU faculty at large, or the University of Colorado.

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