Dialectic Aspects of Recent Change in Academe

In: The annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Volume 448, Issue 1, p. 15-24

Abstract

Viewed in retrospect, recent changes in academe have not all been upward and onward. Divergent forces in a democratic society with a pluralistic culture generate conflicting pressures on the academic profession, as may be witnessed in the dialectic interplay of continuity and change, autonomy and heteronomy, meritocracy and egalitarianism. Internal accommodation to these dualities has necessarily entailed trade-offs, and losses as well as gains. Compromises intended to mollify adversaries during the turbulent 1960s and early 1970s have resulted in later difficulties for the profession, with the implication that to avoid future repetition of past mistakes, academe must calculate more realistically the probable outcomes of alternate courses of action and reaction.