Here.
A post up at Crooked Timber discusses the merits of university and college "mega-endowments" and a recent spat of papers and articles on that subject. In particular, an recently published article by Sarah Waldeck took a good deal of flack and plaudits. Her paper demonstrates, pretty convincingly, that universities and colleges with massive endowments (i.d. Harvard at 20-some billion) have yet to offer any good arguments for their almost-obsessive endowment-building.
It's an interesting argument. But, as noted by Lawrence Solum and Harry at Crooked Timber, she doesn't demonstrate what the problem with having a massive endowment really is. If you're all that interested in this, go ahead and follow the links; I'm going to talk about a couple of points raised indirectly, mostly on the importance of a healthy academia.
Intellectualism has caught a lot of flack as of late, especially in this presidential run. Senator Clinton, for example, disparaged economics as "elite"--dismissing economic theory in favor of her "gas tax holiday" nonsense. Barack Obama has been called "elite" in about twenty different ways. Politicians and pudits have been heralding the importance of pandering to the working-class everyman, etc..
Putting aside for the moment that trying to define what, exactly, this everyman wants (or is) is a largely impossible and wrongheaded endeavor, and putting aside that the somehow our pundit class is somehow able to channel these mythical voters' wants is laughable, there is some truth to the idea that we have, culturally, begun to loose emphasis on academia as a source of great importance.
In particular, the centrality of philosophy to culture--hell, the centrality of philosophy to academia--has long-since past. Some of this is no doubt due to the ivory tower mentality of philosophy and philosophers. More, probably, is due to the concussive effects of post-modernist, feminist, Marxist, -ist philosophies which are quite unpalatable (and incomprehensible) to most of culture-at-large (not to mention many academics).
It doesn't help, either, that Richard Rorty wrote The Death of Epistemology and Lauden declared that demarcation in philosophy of science is a "pseudo-problem". I'm not going to put forward a real defense of the idea that philosophy of science has grave importance or that epistemology isn't nearly as dead as Rorty might have thought. The point is, in large part, academia isn't seen the way it used to be.
What's more, there's a good deal of (interesting) discussion out there on what exactly higher education accomplishes. Kathy G. points to a study that indicates that there isn't much improvement in verbal skills as a result of higher ed.. Furthermore, people raise questions like, "is the role of universities simply to provide credentials?"... etc. etc.
However, Solum, gives a rather interesting potential counter-argument to these sorts of claims, and, furthermore, provides what might be an important positive argument for the centrality of philosophy. He writes:
Mega-endowments are held by major research universities that play a major role in promoting the production of knowledge--much of which is in the form of "ideas" in the technical sense (that is, new information that cannot be protected by intellectual property). Creating stable institutions that that invest in the creation of knowledge and make decisions on the basis of academic values and are not responsive to the steering mechanisms of the market or the system of electoral politics is, I would argue, a very great social good.
We could expand his argument to elite institutions play a major role in the production of knowledge and ideas. This, I believe, is at the center of what is so important about philosophy. And, by placing this--the production of ideas (or memes, whatever) and knowledge--at the center of public discourse, including politics, we might do some good.
Ethics and law seem to be the most application you'll get out of most philosophy--at least application that is recognized by others. However, the idea that philosophy ought to be central to other fields (science, for example) is strong. But I'd like to point out that the media, ostensibly a field that tries to report facts and provide explanations for those facts, would be well served by a careful, epistemologically guided exploration of its norms and values.
After all, if truth is an aim of science, than philosophy, which examines the production of knowledge (necessarily true) ought to be more central. This, especially in light of the media's flailing, marred coverage in recent years.
I'm going to bed. But, it is something to think about.
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