The University - Fascism's Great Incubator & Nursery

For Dervy - AI Overview:

The German model of higher education, also known as the Humboldtian model, has been a major influence on American universities since the late 1800s: 

 

• Research and teaching

  The model combines research and studies, and emphasizes that professors should be excellent in both areas. 

   
• Teaching methods

  The model introduced new teaching methods like lectures and seminars. 

   
• Graduate school

  The model established graduate school training as a mark of a true scholar. 

   
• Research techniques

  The model taught new findings based on experimental and empirical research techniques. 

   
• Land grant universities

  The new model was adopted by land grant universities, which deemphasized classical Latin and Greek in favor of science, technology, and other fields. 

   

Wilhelm von Humboldt was a key figure in the development of the modern university in both the United States and Germany. 

 

However, there are some differences between the German and American models:

• Research focus: In the 19th century, German universities focused more on pure research than applied research.
• Number of professors: German universities have fewer professors per university than the United States.
• University autonomy: US research universities have more autonomy than German universities. 
   
  
  

From the video above:

The great German sociologist Max Weber argued in a very important essay that I also used to teach at Oxford, this essay, "Science as a vocation" written in 1917, that political activism should not be permissible in a lecture hall or another University Building "Because the prophet and the demagogue do not belong on the academic platform." And this was also the argument of the University of Chicago's 1967 Calvin Report, which you may have heard referred to recently that universities must "Maintain an independence from political Fashions, passions, and pressures". But that separation between scholarship and politics has been entirely disregarded at the major American universities in recent years. Instead, the elite institutions have embraced the kind of institutional change that Gay championed as Dean and president (of Harvard). 

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Fascist turning point for the American University, "The Port Huron Statement" (1962) by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), written by Tom Hayden

The University and Social Change

There is perhaps little reason to be optimistic about the above analysis. True, the Dixiecrat-GOP coalition is the weakest point in the dominating complex of corporate, military and political power. But the civil rights, peace, and student movements are too poor and socially slighted, and the labor movement too quiescent, to be counted with enthusiasm. From where else can power and vision be summoned? We believe that the universities are an overlooked seat of influence.

First, the university is located in a permanent position of social influence. Its educational function makes it indispensable and automatically makes it a crucial institution in the formation of social attitudes. Second, in an unbelievable complicated world, it is the central institution for organizing, evaluating, and transmitting knowledge. Third, the extent to which academic resources presently are used to butress immoral social practice is revealed first, by the extent to which defense contracts make the universities engineers of the arms race. Too, the use of modern social science as a manipulative tool reveals itself in the "human relations" consultants to the modern corporations, who introduce trivial sops to give laborers feelings of "participation" or "belonging," while actually deluding them in order to further exploit their labor. And, of course, the use of motivational research is already infamous as a manipulative aspect of American politics. But these social uses of the universities' resources also demonstrate the unchangeable reliance by men of power on the men and storehouses of knowledge: this makes the university functionally tied to society in new ways, revealing new potentialities, new levers for change. Fourth, the university is the only mainstream institution that is open to particippation by individuals of nearly any viewpoint.

These, at least, are facts, no matter how dull the teaching, how paternalistic the rules, how irrelevant the research that goes on. Social relevance, the accessibility to knowledge, and internal openness—these together make the university a potential base and agency in a movement of social change.

1. Any new left in America must be, in large measure, a left with real intellectual skills, committed to deliberativeness, honesty, reflection as working tools. The university permits the political life to be an adjunct to the academic one, and action to be informed by reason.

2. A new left must be distributed in significant social roles throughout the country. The universities are distributed in such a manner.

3. A new left must consist of younger people who matured in the post-war world, and partially be directed to the recruitment of younger people. The university is an obvious beginning point.

4. A new left must include liberals and socialists, the former for their relevance, the latter for their sense of thoroughgoing reforms in the system. The university is a more sensible place than a political party for these two traditions to begin to discuss their differences and look for political synthesis.

5. A new left must start controversy across the land, if national policies and national apathy are to be reversed. The ideal university is a community of controversy, within itself and in its effects on communities beyond.

6. A new left must transform modern complexity into issues that can be understood and felt close-up by every human being. It must give form to the feelings of helplessness and indifference, so that people may see the political, social, and economic sources of their private troubles and organize to change society. In a time of supposed prosperity, moral complacency, and political manipulation, a new left cannot rely on only aching stomachs to be the engine force of social reform. The case for change, for alternatives that will involve uncomfortable personal efforts, must be argued as never before. The university is a relevant place for all of these activities.

But we need not indulge in illusions: the university system cannot complete a movement of ordinary people making demands for a better life. From its schools and colleges across the nation, a militant left might awaken its allies, and by beginning the process towards peace, civil rights, and labor struggles, reinsert theory and idealism where too often reign confusion and political barter. The power of students and faculty united is not only potential; it has shown its actuality in the South, and in the reform movements of the North.

The bridge to political power, though, will be built through genuine cooperation, locally, nationally, and internationally, between a new left of young people, and an awakening community of allies. In each community we must look within the university and act with confidence that we can be powerful, but we must look outwards to the less exotic but more lasting struggles for justice.

To turn these possibilities into realities will involve national efforts at university reform by an alliance of students and faculty. They must wrest control of the educational process from the administrative bureaucracy. They must make fraternal and functional contact with allies in labor, civil rights, and other liberal forces outside the campus. They must import major public issues into the curriculum—research and teaching on problems of war and peace is an outstanding example. They must make debate and controversy, not dull pedantic cant, the common style for educational life. They must consciously build a base for their assault upon the loci of power.

As students for a democratic society, we are committed to stimulating this kind of social movement, this kind of vision and program in campus and community across the country. If we appear to seek the unattainable, as it has been said, then let it be known that we do so to avoid the unimaginable.