What are Universities For?

July/August 2010

Well, that separation is even more the evil of the age now. In our present Zeitgeist, dominated as it is by a libertarian, atomistic kind of liberalism, the idea that any individual has responsibility for the moral formation of any other — and especially an adult for a late adolescent who is not her own child — is not only implausible but positively suspect. Indeed, if I were to make the suggestion to my academic colleagues that they have a responsibility for the moral formation of their students, I'd wager that most of them would meet it with a snort of indignation against such insufferable, Victorian paternalism. And yet, if it is true that university education — especially in the arts and humanities — is not about the growth of certain intellectual and social virtues, then it does become very hard to see why the study of landscape painting or medieval North African history or Byron's reception among women is anything but a private and rather frivolous indulgence.

Comrade Zhdanov was right. If they don't have a moral vocation, then the arts and humanities are doomed to degrade themselves, if not by serving the private whims of cosseted intellectuals, then by trying to justify public investment in terms of their contribution to the tourist and entertainment industries. I hope that such a dismal prospect repels us. But if it does repel us, then it should also move us to turn round and face a sharp question about ourselves and about the culture that we allow to prevail among us: how have we become the kind of people who, presented with the claim that university teachers bear responsibility for the moral formation of their students, would typically snap back: "So who made me my brother's moral keeper?"

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Andrew Troup

November 20th, 2010
4:11 AM

I had resolved to follow the example of others who have not dignified Masha's 'suggestion' with a reply, but I was troubled by the possibility that an impressionable mind might mistake the absence of refutation for some sort of tacit affirmation. Biggar's contention in this article is that Zhdanov was half right on one specific assertion. Dmitri Shostakovich was prepared to make a larger claim, namely that Zhdanov was '(so) often right' - a startling claim from someone so obviously in Z's sights at that moment. Given Zhdanov's gulag-populating proclivities, it is striking to me (as clearly it was to Biggar) that someone in so much danger could still entertain the possibility that Z was not automatically wrong about everything - whereas Masha, despite the fact that s/he is presumably not accessing the www from within a gulag, seems disposed to tap-dance on the coffin of that possibility with a complacent certainty which seems to me to characterise a closed mind. The tenor of the article suggests that Biggar chose the example because of this dramatic contrast between Z's wrong-headedness and the fact that he nevertheless had a valid point (or half a point) on this issue. Masha seems to prefer to infer that Biggar chose it because he saw Zhdanov as some sort of moral oracle; M offers no refutation of the idea, preferring simply to 'denounce' the source. This seems to me to be an example of the sort of Orwellian political correctness (in the original sense) which collapsed the Soviet Union. The suggestion that Biggar stick to his own field reminds me of a similarly reasonable suggestion I saw recently. A letter to the editor of my local rag suggested that those who sought to disallow dogs on certain local beaches were clearly not dog owners, and hence had no relevant expertise to bring to the discussion. I am inclined to disagree. I do not believe I require expertise on dogs, or on oysters, to recognise that what dogs lay on beaches are not pearls. Conversely, Biggar does not need specific (presumably historical) expertise to assess an idea from any source on whether it might contain a germ ... or a pearl ... of present-day merit.

Masha

September 16th, 2010
8:09 PM

Is this guy for real? Quoting "Comrade" Zhdanov,who made a solid contribution to the gulag population, when talking about the artist and moral contributions. Can I suggest he sticks to his own field?

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