Politics and the Academy

In: Government & opposition: an international journal of comparative politics, Band 3, Heft 1, S. 23-48

Abstract

IT WILL BE NO NEWS THAT THE ACADEMY IS IN FLUX – THAT there is once again a 'crisis in the university'. It is easy to exaggerate this crisis – but today, in countries like the US A and Britain, it has special 'linked' features. In this article I explore some of these links, especially their 'political' dimension. Politics affect the universities (and other centres of higher education) in countless ways – through budgetary controls, through definition of 'national needs', and in some countries, though political control over appointments. The students, transient and often bewildered travellers through the university system, can be the harbingers, and sometimes the agents, of political change. The universities, again, are bound to reflect or resist old social values – and to create new ones. There are new problems for university 'governments'. They are all pressed to revise their rules of discipline – and some are faced with an internal 'anti-intellectual' opposition. The torments at Berkeley, the dismissal of Clerk Kerr in the aftermath of Governor Reagan's victory in California, the disclosures of the links between American student bodies and the CIA, the protests of British Vice-Chancellors over 'public accountability', the 'sit-in' in the LSE, the slogans of 'student power' – these are largely, and in some cases, wholly, political landmarks of the university crisis.