BOOKS
Here, their fierce rage subdued, and lost their pride,
The pope and Luther slumber side by side.
479
To his words on the nature and mission of the university press
Pelikan brings many years of experience as chairman of the publication
committee of the Yale University Press. Publication, in his words, is "a
fundamental psychological, indeed almost physiological imperative that is
rooted in the metabolism of scholarship."
It
is through publication that
"research remains honest by exposing itself to the criticism and correction
of other scholars." But it is a legitimate concern of the university press as
well as the Ph.D . mentor/midwife of dissertations that readership not be
limited only to other scholars and that results of research be presented
with "clarity and grace." If the object of the university is "diffusion of
knowledge," as Newman had it, then its press is the widest
potential
means
of attaining its object - but only if its publications can be made readable.
Insisting on "language of sensitivity and taste" seems a bit much to an old
mentor/midwife like this reviewer, but it is worth trying.
If some of these aspirations seem a little high-flown for our sordid
times, Pelikan is quite aware that the university is not only a contributor
to the society in which it is rooted but dependent upon it as well, and
that "if either of these partners is sick, the other suffers as well." In this
connection he devotes a chapter to "Duties to Society," in which he
readily admits there is at present sickness in both society and university.
Faculties and administrators are morally and practically obliged to devote
serious effort to correct these ills , both extramural and intramural. But
their first obligation is to address failings and flaws within their own walls.
In
all
countries the university remains the unique gate, ladder, or channel
of opportunity. If it allows itself to degenerate into a private club, it im–
poverishes itself as well as those excluded. It is obliged, therefore, to "go
on striving to eliminate from its own programs of student admissions and
faculty appointments as well as from its curriculum the vestiges of dis–
crimination and prejudice against race, class, or gender that still remain."
We are warned, however, that reckless pursuit of this worthy policy is
"potentially as hazardous to the students whom it is intended to benefit as
it is to the university, for it can run the danger of debasing the educational
currency in the very process of redistributing it." Another policy which
Pelikan warns against sounds, as we shall see, strangely like a policy
pro–
moted
by other critics of the university:
So easily, however, can diagnosis turn into advocacy, and so subtly
can a center of research on social change transform itself - or allow
itself to be transformed - into a cell for galvanizing a society into ac-
