Given the political Right's attacks on U.S. academics as too liberal, we broach questions about knowledge production and curriculum development. We first explore how the Right has used arguments for freedom of speech and ideological diversity to undermine higher education's mission in the hope of polluting the public sphere with ideas that are…

This article retraces the infamous controversies between the "Edinburgh Review" and Oxford in the early 19th century. It seeks to broaden the understanding of the origins and background of John Henry Newman's idea of a university by analyzing the connections and differences on both sides of the controversies, drawing from writers such as…

Neo-liberal capitalism is a representation of values that are detrimental to intellectual inquiry. Market deregulation and consumer choice are relentless in their erosion of academic autonomy and traditions of independent scholarship. Education as a 'positional good' may be weakened more in the post-1992 higher education sector, where…

"Politically correct" outlooks are to be neither wholly accepted nor wholly rejected; they are to be learned from. The self-scrutiny bred by concern about political correctness is an important part of the university tradition; and without it, colleges could not experience their current growing diversity. (MSE)

It is proposed that the postmodern university, with its emphasis on technology and its market orientation, departs from the true principals of liberal education, which is the development of intellect: the ability to think clearly and critically and to understand ourselves and others. (MSE)

Changes in the college and university environment (oversimplified instructional materials, demand for detailed instructions, avoidance of challenge in curricula, overuse of student evaluation of faculty) suggest that in their efforts to recruit and retain students, institutions have promoted students' increased intellectual dependency. This…