ADMINISTERING THE UNIVERSITY OF THE FUTURE
445
works.
It
is not a culture receptive to
ars rhetorica,
except in the sense that
it admires brash dishonesty
if
it is cleverly enough packaged.
Against that background, I doubt that rhetoric in the great tradition of
Sir Philip Sidney stands much chance. Universities can and do change cul–
ture, but it is a process of generations. My prescription for the university
of the future, therefore, begins in the administration of the university of
today. Serious universities-universities that understand that their educa–
tional obligation extends far beyond equipping the next generation of
technocrats and specialists with the tools of their trades, universities that
are committed to endowing society with a richer, more worthy vision of
what humans may be and what they may achieve--these universities will
begin to restore rhetoric to its rightful place in a liberal arts education.
By what practical steps will they proceed? My crystal ball does not
have unlimited horizons, but I see a few of those steps. Several weeks ago
Boston University held its first student
conversazione.
A
conversazione
is a
form that sprang up in England some years ago: it is essentially a paper by
an invited speaker and a dinner party with guests from diverse fields sub–
jected to the mild discipline of talking about the paper with each other
and, after dinner, posing questions to the speaker. Boston University has
been holding these conversazioni with grown-ups for almost a decade, but
we decided to find out whether students could rise to the occasion.
The results were greatly encouraging, not in the sense that students
demonstrated sprezzatura; they did not. But neither did they arduize. They
rose to the occasion wi th such good will and desire to succeed that I was
thoroughly convinced of the existence of an underground ocean of long–
ing for serious intellectual conversation. These were students who would
gratefully welcome the opportunity to acquire and to use the arts of
rhetoric.
Part of the problem is that we have created on America's campuses a
world where students have very little occasion to engage in serious con–
versation with adults. Campuses often resemble late-adolescent ghettos. At
Boston University and most other universities, from 3:00 on a weekday
afternoon until class the next day, most students converse only with other
students. Even in class, serious conversation in the full sense of the word is
frequently lacking. Because colleges and universities in this century have
more and more defined themselves merely as transmitters of information
rather than shapers of the minds and character of the young, we have
neglected that form of rhetoric that is best suited to drawing students into
a civilized community: adult conversation.
Still, restoring rhetoric will take more than increased opportunities for
conversation and better freshman English courses, although both will help.
Successfully restoring rhetoric to the curriculum will require the long-
