“One of the next things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate Ministry to the churches when our present ministers shall lie in the dust.” (New England’s First Fruits, 1643)
Most of America’s colonial colleges were founded in a utopian spirit, as cities on the hill. Often literally: in places of natural beauty chosen for their capacity to inspire. Their ideals were, to be sure, mostly narrow and sectarian. Nonetheless, their aim was not worldliness but a dedication to the work of the spirit. And as they evolved into the mainly secular institutions we now know and largely admire, they have remained places half in and half out of the world, still dedicated, at their best, to cultivating thought and experimentation for their own sake, not simply for their utilitarian rewards.
Campuses Abroad: Promise and Perils
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As they and other colleges unfolded from their cramped beginnings, the most successful of the private institutions developed what you might call a creative misunderstanding with the society that sponsored and supported them. The most telling example might be the symbiotic relationship of William Rainey Harper and John D. Rockefeller in the creation of the University of Chicago: a visionary president and someone willing to write the checks as one Gothic hall after another rose in Hyde Park, Ill. There have been many moments of menace to the freedom of American universities—some starkly visible at present—but on the whole they have enjoyed a remarkable grant of freedom from the society to which they are supposed to be bringing a better future. There has been protection even for the “useless” subjects: literature, the arts.
Is it so clear that they will do as well in authoritarian regimes—ones that may well believe in the promise of higher education, but not in academic and personal freedom? My friend and former Yale colleague Christopher L. Miller noted forcefully in these pages last spring that Yale University’s stated policy of free speech and freedom from discrimination on the basis of race, gender, or sexual orientation fits uneasily in Singapore—where the university will open a new college in partnership with the National University of Singapore. Homosexuality is, in fact, against the law in Singapore. No doubt Yale students will never be prosecuted under antisodomy laws—at least when on campus (can anyone guarantee the same off campus?).
But that’s only part of the point: In the past, collaboration with repressive regimes has often produced a shrinking margin of freedom for rights of speech, assembly, and unfettered academic debate and research. And anyone who thinks Yale-NUS is entering a thriving democracy has only to read the Human Rights Watch report on Singapore, from which I cite just a few lines: “Singapore’s constitution guarantees rights to free expression, peaceful assembly, and association, but also permits restrictions in the name of security, the protection of public order, morality, parliamentary privilege, and racial and religious harmony. The restrictions are interpreted broadly. Censorship extends to broadcast and electronic media, films, videos, music, sound recordings, and computer games. The Newspaper and Printing Presses Act requires yearly registration and permits authorities to limit circulation of foreign papers which ‘engage in the domestic politics of Singapore.’”
There is a story told about my old teacher and mentor, Renato Poggioli, during a debate of the Harvard University faculty in the 1950s, at a time when universities were asked to require their students to sign “loyalty oaths.” McGeorge Bundy, dean of the faculty of arts and scientists, claimed that Harvard would not be involved in administering the oath; all it had to do was lick the stamps on the envelopes (containing the signed oaths) sent to Washington. Poggioli, a refugee from Fascist Italy who spoke with the purest Tuscan accent, rose to say: “I am from the city of Machiavelli. But that is the most Machiavellian speech I have ever heard. You begin lickin’ their stamps, and you end up lickin’ their something else.”
One can certainly make an argument in favor of bringing the American cultural capital represented by Yale to Singapore or that of New York University to Abu Dhabi, where it is expanding. I wish, though, that I could believe that these new creations would partake of the same idealism that drove so many founders of colleges in early America. The new version of the cultural-export business seems to me largely market driven. It strikes me as the outcome of university governance that has become increasingly corporate in structure, goals, and management. University presidents now seem compelled to brand and sell their products not just at home, but also to a global market. I fear that may compromise the idealism—the utopianism—that has characterized American universities at their best. I hope I am wrong. I would be happy to see NYU and Yale make uncompromising statements about their understanding of freedom in the teeth of regimes that do not practice freedom.