Higher education is a convenient
political lightening rod. Witness the flap surrounding
Harvard President Lawrence Summers's comments about
women and science, the firestorm created by Colorado
professor Ward Churchill, and public outcry regarding
the alleged liberal bias of universities. Such fixations
will electrocute everyone, not just academics.
Universities face tremendous challenges:
dwindling fiscal support, deterioration of public sympathy,
and the need to create supportive communities. The stakes
could not be higher. It is time to stop obsessing over
various “scandals of the moment” and think
seriously about our long-term future and the role university
systems must play in it.
Around the country, an idea is
taking hold. Professors are viewing their mission as
one of “academic engagement.” As noted by
University of Texas (UT) at Austin Professor Richard
Cherwitz, academic engagement means that collaboration
across disciplines and partnerships with the community
must produce solutions to society's most vexing problems
(Cherwitz 2005).
But it is not enough for schools
to pursue this ideal. We need the understanding and
assistance of the public, the media, and politicians
of all stripes.
Too many have come to view university
faculty as “ivory tower” dwellers, isolated
from the concerns of ordinary people and insistent on
promoting ideological agendas. My own experience as
a professor at eight different schools--including a
community college, secular and religious colleges, and
research universities--has consistently exploded this
myth. But, alas, my testimony alone won't likely change
many people's minds about academe.
Some may better understand what
academics strive to do not by thinking of classes and
books but of “intellectual capital.” Like
monetary capital, intellectual capital is the cumulative
product of both individual effort and supportive communities.
Intellectual capital is the dividend of years of hard
work and practical experience that bears fruit by transforming
lives and benefiting society. The best academics are,
in the words of Cherwitz, “intellectual entrepreneurs--scholars
who take risks and seize opportunities, discover and
create knowledge, innovate, collaborate, and solve problems
in any number of social realms” (Cherwitz 2002).
Echoing Cherwitz's view, University of Rochester President
Thomas Jackson (Jackson 2005) recently declared, “The
best teachers and researchers are all ‘intellectual
entrepreneurs.' They're in the business of creating
new information, new ways of thinking, new ways of seeing
their particular discipline. A biomedical researcher
working on the latest vaccine, a political scientist
establishing a new way of looking at studying political
processes, and a young musician figuring out how to
create his or her path through the art world are every
bit as entrepreneurial as someone establishing a new
business.”
Jackson's point is not that intellectual
entrepreneurs can replace business entrepreneurs. Rather,
academics are distinct kinds of entrepreneurs who work
with and beside those in business. As Cherwitz, who
directs UT's Intellectual Entrepreneurship initiative
and is a leader in the national movement to bring entrepreneurial
thinking to the arts and sciences, contends, understanding
academics this way “requires us to acknowledge
that a university's collective wisdom is among its most
precious assets--anchored to, but not in competition
with, basic research and disciplinary knowledge--and
that part of the significance of such wisdom is tied
to its use” (Cherwitz 2005).
At the University of Colorado at
Denver and Health Sciences Center, my colleagues and
I observe entrepreneurship every day: when faculty tackle
complex issues involving public health, environmental
resources, public education, and the needs of growing
social and cultural diversity. At our best, we take
on these challenges not for selfish gain or fame, but
because we are--to borrow Cherwitz's terminology--”citizen-scholars.”
At our best, we seek more than narrow, theoretical knowledge;
we seek academic engagement that passionately embraces
the ethical obligation to contribute to society. In
short, we want to both discover knowledge and put it
to work in ways that make a real difference.
This is an aspect of our identity
we desperately desire our fellow citizens to appreciate.
But it is hard for this message to be heard. Rising
tuition, war, and a myriad of scandals on college campuses
drown out the deep investment universities are trying
to make in our collective future. But without public
recognition and endorsement, the social compact between
higher education and the state it serves will disintegrate;
all of us as shareholders will lose the social security
of a future intelligently anticipated and planned for.
It is well understood that a state's
long-term fiscal security is closely connected with
its investment in education. While paying the bills
is important, there are many additional challenges.
Rather than making universities scapegoats for the very
real anxieties felt about pressing problems, let's reflect
on how universities are--and can increasingly become--forces
for social good. Academics should be seen as intellectual
entrepreneurs who stand on equal footing with those
in the public and private sectors--citizens who are
collaboratively producing knowledge to change lives
and improve the human condition.
We are Americans fighting for America.
We are scholars and we are citizens. Let us forge new
productive and cooperative connections between ourselves
to keep the nation strong in the twenty-first century.
References
Cherwitz, R. 2002. Intellectual Entrepreneurship Program
(IE). The University of Texas at Austin. webspace.utexas.edu/cherwitz/www/ie.
Cherwitz, R. 2005. Intellectual entrepreneurship: The
new social compact. Inside Higher Ed. March
9, 2005.
www.insidehighered.com/views/2005/03/09/cherwitz1.
Jackson, T. 2005. Fostering intellectual creativity:
An interview with Thomas Jackson. Ewing Marion Kauffman
Foundation. www.kauffman.org/items.cfm/504.
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