JOHN R. SEARLE
707
piece of anecdotal evidence is this: My interests take me to conferences
on a variety of different subjects, including neurobiology, artificial intel–
ligence, psychology, linguistics, and a number of others, and I am fre–
quently struck by the differences in intellectual level and discursive style
among different academic disciplines. I believe that as far as general intel–
lectual level is concerned, the field of "literary theory" is probably the
lowest I have experienced. The carnival-like atmosphere of the annual
meetings of the Modern Language Association contrasts sharply with, for
instance, the atmosphere of conferences on neurobiology. My impression
of neurobiology conferences is that the participants are deeply commit–
ted to neurobiological research and think that what they do is impor–
tant. My guess is that many of the participants at the MLA have lost in–
terest in doing what they are officially supposed to be doing, so they are
doing something else, such as advancing political causes. My impression is
that they do not believe the scholarly study of modern languages and
their literatures is worth devoting their lives to, so they devote them–
selves to what seem more worthwhile activities.
Where undergraduate education is concerned, we do not have a co–
herent vision of what we are trying to do. We have lost confidence in
the traditional ideal of an integrated, well-balanced education for un–
dergraduates, but we have not replaced it with a coherent alternative.
We really are in doubt as to what constitutes success and failure in un–
dergraduate education. We educate high school students for college, and
we educate undergraduate students in their respective majors for the
graduate and professional schools, but we do not have an adequate the–
ory of what constitutes success in general education for undergraduates.
Though we pay lip service to the traditional ideals of quality and excel–
lence as exemplified by the Western intellectual tradition, many of us
would rather not spend much time teaching courses which convey that
tradition to undergraduates. In certain humanities disciplines, especially
those concerned with the study of literature, there is a crisis of self-defi–
nition . In such a situation of institutional loss of self-confidence, a de–
termined minority can have an influence vastly out of proportion to its
numbers or the strength of its arguments.
The most offensive trait of American academics as a class is their
timidity. In many cases, even those who have tenure are unwilling to
take controversial stands (for fear of being hated by their colleagues and
students, I suppose). In this situation, at a time when the mission of
higher education is in doubt, we have to keep reminding our students,
their parents, and the public generally of a few truths about our mission,
even when these truths are unpopular. I would like to conclude by stat–
ing a few of my own assumptions.
If the system of higher education - as opposed to high schools, trade
