This article provides a conceptual reformulation of Merton's scientific ethos widely known by the acronym CUDOS (i.e. communism, universalism, disinterestedness and organised scepticism). While Merton perceived the threat to the autonomy of science as coming from "outside" the walls of academe, mainly in the form of nationalism and…

To cultivate humanity is to invest in, enrich, or elevate all that it is to be human. But cultivating humanity has become a pressing challenge in higher education because learning about what it means to be human depends on significant and ongoing personal engagement of students with faculty and staff who serve as mentors, advisors, and guides.…

Twenty-five years ago, American sociologist Robert Neelly Bellah (Bellah, et al., 1986: 303) critiqued the growing isolation of intellectuals within universities and called for a return to "social science as public philosophy." Little seems to have changed. My thirty-seven year experience at the University of Alberta suggests that…

Earlier 20th-century thinkers like Lewis Mumford and Edmund Wilson kept the university and its apparatus at arm's length. Indeed, they often disdained it. They oriented themselves toward an educated public, and, as a result, they developed a straightforward prose and gained a nonprofessional audience. As his reputation grew, Wilson printed up a…

In this article, the author refutes the arguments forwarded by William Deresiewicz in his much-discussed essay, "The American Scholar." Deresiewicz claimed that his background (as a student at Columbia and a former associate professor of English at Yale) rendered him incapable of a few minutes of small talk with the plumber who came to fix his…

It is argued that negative portrayals of the professoriate in popular culture stem from growing anti-intellectualism in American society. College faculty are often derided as those whose work is primarily or entirely theoretical, too esoteric for practical use. Faculty are also portrayed as foolish or eccentric. Popular culture and public opinion…

A jaded education professor deplores the endless memorization, mindless assignments, and incessant testing going on in high school classrooms, to the exclusion of intellectually and aesthetically challenging pursuits. He refuses to devise another strategic plan, restructuring, or curriculum standard. Schools must strive to enculturate youngsters…

Anti-intellectualism and negative public attitudes about the professoriate are traced to four sources: (1) unquestioned supremacy of economic over cultural capital in the United States; (2) lack of organizational vehicles for faculty to contribute to social change and public debate; (3) unfair competition from policy institutes and foundations;…