Government and the University in the United States

The puzzled American finds the European university debate too ideological. Issues of Right versus Left are at the very core of the European argument, while for the time they are on the periphery in the United States and (outside Quebec) in Canada. The moderate, more responsible European Left quite rightly sees recent university reforms as desirable means, even at the cost of temporary destabilization of university governance, of bringing essentially medieval institutions—intended to educate leaders—into line with democracy. The ghost of Burke hovers over every dispute in Britain between advocates of the new versus the old universities, and