Paul Goodman's Community of Scholars

...The most important politics in the university is the politics of curriculum and the most important freedom that a scholar can win is the freedom to flout, say, the pragmatic mores of his own civilization and ignore the existing institutions and their "needs...

...Goodman may admire the corporate courage of the medieval faculties, but he will have nothing to do with the restraints of corporatism...

...Goodman's practical proposals, in this and other books, seem to assume that a better world already exists...

...He guesses that their students must have rallied enthusiastically to their side, knowing, as modern students presumably do not, that they were studying with men...

...indeed, the universities— and the cities in which they grew—were cut off in large measure from the feudal world which made no demands at all since it did not require educated men...

...But he can be dispensed with only if we assume the possibility of some such harmony as Goodman describes...

...Something like this seems to underlie his strange conception of the academic curriculum...

...But it avoids all the problems of selection and choice—the crucial problems of intellectual life...

...As in any other community at war, the struggles of the scholars for freedom and room in the medieval world led to organization and centralization...

...There will be spirit, doubtless, in whatever it requires, just as there is water in all physical objects...

...Curriculum is not given but created...

...For all his talk about teaching and learning "for keeps," about courage and risk-taking, he yearns for a society in which courage will hardly be a necessary attribute of teachers or critics: there will be nothing to fear...

...In his rapidfire history there is not even a hint of the hardships of the "common life...

...They fail, more often than not...

...But he recognizes, along with many of his colleagues, that the price of this freedom has all too often been isolation and ineffectuality...

...Goodman dislikes the whole business...

...The first alternative raises all sorts of difficulties, practical and moral—and chief among these the difficulty which Goodman so resolutely ignores: of maintaining freedom and encouraging disagreement and conflict within the walled city...

...Is he never wrong...

...And since war is not a permanent condition, they led also to negotiations between the new university leaders and the secular and religious authorities...

...In one form or another the medieval institution survives, a city, as Goodman writes, walled from the world...

...It is probably true that the more people we undertake to educate, the more society and government will attempt to dictate the precise character of the education...

...Curriculum is always given...

...And finally, some of the professors stay to fight a hundred small and bitter battles in the name of an ideal curriculum and a liberal education...

...In Paris, writes the medieval historian Rashdale (quoted by Goodman on page 32 and his major source throughout), "It was the necessity of mutual support and united opposition to the Chancellor (of the Cathedral) which called into existence the university organization...

...This self-government is what the bastion protects...

...They search for allies among the students, aim always at spreading and escalating academic controversies and, simultaneously, at rebuilding the walls of the city and wresting control from the administrators...

...It is the process of intellectual argument and growth which involves continual experimentation with new courses and teaching methods as well as with new ideas and hypotheses, new arts and sciences...

...To oppose them, one must question that givenness and develop an alternative conception of curriculum...

...I would quarrel with his vision of harmony and anarchy even if it were a pure utopia, but it seems to me especially dangerous when it becomes a view of the real world, a basis W] for concrete reforms...

...But if universities must always generate conflict, then we need the administrator...

...There is, of course, nothing medieval about this vision...

...But societies do not usually give medals to their critics...

...On the periphery of this core of curriculum politics, the professional administrator finds his place...

...With some hesitation, I want to describe Goodman as an advocate of the second alternative...

...Paris won its autonomy, in part, by playing off distant popes against local bishops, though Goodman treats this, in his usual fashion, as a simple struggle of scholars against outsiders...

...It raises no real difficulties, because it repudiates the very idea that difficulties might exist...

...And this atmosphere was the product of the very community structure which Goodman so much admires...

...This may at times be necessary for individuals or groups, but it is not automatically a good thing...

...I suspect that anarchy would not survive long in the academic city alone...

...it is created in the course of lonely scholarship, communal argument and debate, and faculty intrigue and competition...

...That struggle, of course, never ends: no sooner are definitions arrived at, than individual students or young teachers feel themselves compelled to rebel against them and suggest alternatives...

...they are argued, challenged, transformed...

...Writing as an anarchist, he seems to view social struggle as a kind of disagreement among friends, who quarrel fiercely, then embrace, and soon enough are at it again...

...The Dominicans at Salamancha could never collectively have called the conquest of America unlawful if they had not first enforced among themselves a common opinion as to the nature of law...

...They speak, to some extent, for the ever-changing purposes of modern society—but within the context of the university these purposes are not given...

...Once again, however, the use he makes of history suggests his general point of view: just as he ignores the restraints of medieval corporatism, so he fails entirely to describe the historical consequences of conflict...

...Paul Goodman, anarchist, social critic, man of letters, psychologist, is himself a latter-day product of the breakdown of medieval corporatism and the shattering of that single truth which had made it possible for the scholars of Salamancha to speak with a single voice—and, indeed, impossible for them to speak in any other way...

...Now in a trivial sense, this is true...

...but we don't squeeze water from stones and we must avoid if we can the deadening business of extracting spirit from modern technology and mass culture...

...Precisely for this reason, his use of history is worth examining: it suggests some of the intellectual limitations and practical dangers of the contemporary search for closely integrated communities...

...The administrators of the contemporary corporation are men of the world, devoted to the openness of the university and to the weakness of its walls...

...it is the sciences, mores and institutions of our civilization...

...Goodman is a prime example of an admirable figure: the modern intellectual set loose from all corporate authorities, philosophical systems, and political controls...

...He suggested an image of the university as a kind of bastion (rather than a community) and while this image is by no means adequate, I want to pursue it briefly...

...When individual scholars rebelled against the authority of the church and imagined some heretical opinion as a possible truth, they were laying the foundations of the contemporary university, where it is no longer possible to consult the faculty on matters of morals or law and where the professors privately become consultants...

...The university will be a genuine community, "anarchically self-regulating...

...they are agents of the integration of school and society...

...Today, Goodman's advice is rather like that of John Locke when he wrote that if individual men found the social contract unappealing, they could always go off to the American wilderness...

...He is really an advocate of absolute non-intervention, academic laissez faire...

...In the Middle Ages, the demands were both more general and less forceful...

...Then indeed caretakers, representatives and mediators would be unnecessary...

...Thus the academic community does not oppress its members, but it provides only minimal insulation against the manifold and subtle pressures of the outside world...

...it is there, within the walls, to be lovingly appreciated and criticized...

...Left alone, he insists, the community of scholars would happily have tolerated such a man as himself...

...But this is not entirely true: there have always been powerful, internal drives toward unanimity and uniformity in academic societies—and, in fact, in all "face-to-face communities...

...It may even be true, it is in any case not obviously untrue, that to refuse the price of the, second— togetherness and repression—is to pay the price of the first—loneliness and ineffectuality...

...But this is what Goodman does...

...More often, when the authorities were distant or weak or divided, the result was some sort of compromise in which an area of academic autonomy was marked out and institutions devised to protect it...

...III It is always difficult to know whether Goodman is writing practical proposals or utopian essays...

...There are so many wonderful issues about which to argue...

...But it has not been so...

...In every part of it, it is possible to find spirit, for it was created by spirit—how else is anything created...

...It requires men who can see it, not men who can make it...

...These problems would not be solved if the scholars were to take Goodman's advice and secede from the captured communities, walk out through the gates with their students and wander about the world...

...Life within them is not very different from life outside...

...Describing such administrative takeovers, Goodman is at his best: rightly outraged by their destructive effects upon the always problematic business of teaching and learning...

...It would be difficult to study medieval history for any length of time without sensing the often suffocating atmosphere of guilds, corporations and religious orders...

...The professors, if they like, move easily back and forth through the wide gates...

...Yet corporate integrity in the Middle Ages depended upon the repression of individual dissent...

...he defends the walls of the city...

...but then, let us remember, those old Dominicans did not succeed in stopping the conquest of America...

...So there already exists, in the most basic sense, a harmony of school and society: society is the subject matter of the school...

...Like every appeal by modern radicals to the example of the Middle Ages, this is a strange suggestion...

...For anyone dissatisfied with this situation, for anyone who feels— with Goodman—that the integration of the university into American life compromises the professors and frustrates and disappoints the students, two choices seem open...

...He is a middleman of social and intellectual struggle...

...He admires the strong sense of corporate responsibility and independence among those old Dominicans who spoke with one voice against the most powerful government of their time...

...One way to keep scholars and students from being overwhelmed, as I have already suggested, is to raise higher the university's walls and to struggle within those walls to define more strictly the content of teaching and learning...

...Against these two conditions, and all the diseases of academic life which derive from them, he is in active rebellion...

...and Goodman is wrong: there are sciences, mores and institutions which have in them painfully little "spirit...

...Organization, leadership, domestic disagreements, intervention: these are the forms conflict takes...

...Boswell's Life of Dr...

...This is especially difficult today when the demands of the outside world are so specific, so complex and directed with such force at the educational corporations...

...If the war went badly, these leaders were often replaced by appointees, whose function it was to see that the struggle was not renewed...

...Whether we conform or dissent, we do so alone...

...If modern individualism has its price, so did medieval mutuality and corporatism...

...There is, in fact, nothing surprising about the heavy-handed attempts of men satisfied with the status quo to make the university a basis of stability rather than a source of change...

...Imagine a thirteenth century Paul Goodman beginning a dialogue with a heretic, questioning the value of a syllogism, trying to "unblock" a witch—and then wondering why the authorities solemnly condemn him to the stake...

...his book is a polemic against chancellors, deans, regents, trustees, presidents, captains of erudition and modern administrators...

...The students are admirably prepared during the years of their residence not only for careers in business and government but also for home and family, daily television and book-of-the-month...

...He treats all control as the work of outsiders...

...The experience of conflict has, instead, generated those very adminstrative structures which Goodman deplores...

...Problems of curriculum are the usual topics of books on education, he writes, `But I do not think they are important...

...he represents to the faculty the demands of church and state...

...Today those walls seem neither very high nor very strong...

...In the high Middle Ages there were many cities ready to welcome the wanderers and enter into the same relation of tension and conflict with them that they had once enjoyed elsewhere...

...Seymour is wrong: there is plenty of ground that is not holy...

...Since the academic middlemen do not bring with them the Inquisition— the reason for many a medieval exodus—and since they run a very loose organization, and since there is nowhere to go, most of the professors stay...

...But those autonomous institutions, intended to defend the community as a whole, were often repressive and stifling for individuals within the community—who might win freedom for themselves only by reversing the original process and appealing to outside authorities against the intolerance and bigotry of their colleagues...

...Johnson, Paul Goodman loves the University of Salamancha...

...the whole complex structure of the academic bastion might be dispensed with...

...As in international affairs, intervention sometimes overthrows free institutions and sometimes preserves or restores them...

...Goodman seeks a community in which the intellectual might be integrated but still free, a lively, critical, slyly inventive participant in the day-to-day life of his society...

...In another and perhaps more difficult fashion, both are still being defended...

...They had certainly better keep their hands off, for in the event of attack such a university will hardly be capable of protecting its members or of carrying on a sustained conflict with organized society...

...He spoke this with great emotion...

...In a sense, he would be right to wonder: why indeed...

...Other scholars pursue their lonely studies and forget the academic city...

...it is intellectual and political, first of all a problem of cultural definitions and then of cultural conflict...

...He is by no means al consistent advocate...

...Some of them become academic specialists, dear to an administrator's heart, serving the social needs and reproducing in their own persons that narrowness and dogmatism which in other ages have characterized whole groups of men...

...The first is to raise the walls higher— not in the name of a single truth or a universal faith, but perhaps in the name of a cultural tradition which is under attack and an ethic of independent truth-seeking threatened by the intrusion of "national needs" and "pragmatic" standards...

...Those studies, it should be said, are not without their effects in the world, though Goodman here is concerned rather exclusively with another, more dramatic sort of effectuality...

...The problem with administrators is not administrative (nor is it, as Goodman suggests, "constitutional...

...nor that any significant challenge will thus be posed to the mores and institutions of the outside world...

...Johnson Like Dr...

...Yet we are still members of a university community...

...there is no guarantee that new cultural definitions will be produced in this way rather than in some other...

...All this is what I mean by the politics of curriculum and it is, or rather it ought to be, the core of academic self-government...

...it need not be created but only evoked...

...And government, church and business will keep their hands off...

...He takes care of the day-to-day business of the university...

...He believes that the universities ought to become centers of heresy and criticism (harboring men like himself) and that they ought to exist in some sort of easy harmony with the world outside...

...In their fashion, they defended the law and the culture...

...When Goodman writes with high indignation about the repression of academic radicals, he is forgetting that had there been no danger of repression, there would have been less need for radicalism...

...The second choice is to create a world so admirable that no walls would be necessary, a world where closely-knit bands of intellectual brethren would interact freely and harmoniously with the citizens of society at large...

...C. Wright Mills once wrote that the purpose of a liberal education in a mass society is "to keep us from being overwhelmed...

...In his book The Community of Scholars, Goodman suggests the self-governing medieval corporation as an alternative to the modern university—also a corporation, but no longer a community and no longer self-governing...

...he mediates between the resistance of the scholars and the pressures of the authorities...

...Teaching will be "for keeps" only in the sense of being sincere and intimate...

...It is characteristic of Goodman to applaud such judgments, to ask angrily why contemporary faculties do not deliver themselves of similar pronouncements, and at the same time to ignore the historical conditions which made them impossible...

...he does not go so far as to mention them...

...Too often, however, the middleman seizes control of the academic bastion and turns it into a department store or a social-service station...

...Those sentences of Goodman's remind me of a story by J. D. Salinger in which a cloying and precious description of a college classroom is concluded on a typically pious note: "Seymour once said that all we do our whole lives is go from one little piece of Holy Ground to the next...

...In fact, he argues persuasively the value of social and intellectual conflict both within the community of scholars and between the community and the world...

...I love the University of Salamancha, for when the Spaniards were in doubt as to the lawfulness of conquering America, the University of Salamancha gave it as their opinion that it was not lawful...

...Thus Oxford and Cambridge, become suffocating enclaves of narrow-minded dons, were reformed by Royal Commissions in the nineteenth century...

...Yet it must be said, in defense of administrators, that all they ever do is to enforce that "givenness" of mores and institutions which Goodman himself acknowledges...

...He is, of course, a lover of peace and order, an advocate of received ideas, an attorney of sorts for an established corporation, and almost always more worried by faculty experimentation than by outside pressure...

...Freed from the corporate controls of great monastic orders, we are left also without their support...

...The second, at this moment in our history, does little more than provide the basis for a wide-eyed wonderment at the failures and atrocities of academic life...

...Historically, secessions such as Goodman describes have occasionally occurred, but they have led not to peripatetic univer sities of radical intellectuals, but to new institutions with all the old difficulties...

...Or, to put the matter differently: radicals are repressed when they are dangerous and it seems to me very foolish to long to be dangerous without accepting the risks of repression—and then the need for struggle, organization, leadership, and so on...