The Opening of the Academic Mind: The Challenges Facing a Culture in Crisis

Abstract

This essay offers a perspective on the state of the academy. It attempts to address reforms essential to the progress and development of society: retrieving the central place of teaching in the curriculum, inculcating humility in place of intellectual arrogance, protecting the academy against the intrusion of corporate and political agendas, abrogating the law of “publish or perish,” and finally, widening the intellectual and spiritual horizon of students by introducing them to the noble monuments of classical culture and to that “universal and unanimous tradition” represented in the spiritual heritage of the human race.