Higher Faculties

The novels of David Lodge and Robertson Davies offer amusing insights into the bumbling brilliance of university life, but in their quest to entertain they often leave unanswered questions about the interplay between the life of a university and the social setting in which it either thrives or withers. Here, a veteran of universities in Eastern and Western Europe, the United States, and Canada offers a cross-national sociological analysis of the cultural and political aspects of university life. Interviews with over twenty scholars—several of them Nobel laureates—provide detailed accounts that allow the author to construct a thorough typology of university professors as they live in the existing world of modern sciences and humanities. By linking this typology with various types of social systems, the book focuses on interconnections between unique characteristics of those systems and specific models of scholars. Subsequently, through a series of profiles and case studies, the author constructs illuminating portraits of university life and culture in Poland, England, Japan, the United States, and several other countries.Refining some ideas of Max Weber and Florian Znaniecki, this work explores the increasing world-wide influence of the American (U.S.) style of research and teaching. One of this style's main characteristics, professionalization of the academic—with its focus on sciences and humanities as a career—runs counter to the traditional, European, continental, scholarly ethos that was centered around the concept and practice of the scientific school. While not unequivocally detrimental to scholarly endeavor and creativity, the American domination has some strongly destructive consequences. In the contemporary world, it becomes imperative to look for new ways of making scholars more responsible and responsive in their research and teaching practices. As elaborated in Higher Faculties, the basis for defining their responsibilities lies in the framework of the global ethics.