idad
April 3, 2009, 2:06am
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<p>This is as good description of the University and what makes it special as I have read: [The</a> Idea of the University Colloquium: Donald N. Levine](<a href=“http://iotu.uchicago.edu/levine.html]The ”>The Idea of the University Colloquium: Donald N. Levine )</p>
<p>From the link:
[from] the Faculty Handbook of 1999, citing the words of the Faculty Committee for a Year of Reflection:</p>
<p>Chicago has developed a celebrated–some would say notorious–brand of academic civility. It is a place where one is always in principle allowed to pose the hardest question possible–of a student, a teacher, or a colleague–and feel entitled to expect gratitude rather than resentment for one’s effort.</p>
<pre><code>… From that copious source I limit myself to a few lines by Robert Maynard Hutchins:
<p>What is it that makes the University of Chicago a great educational institution? It is the intense, strenuous, and constant intellectual activity of the place. . . . We like to think that the air is electric, and that from it the student derives an intellectual stimulation that lasts the rest of his life. (40)</p>
<pre><code> And these:
<p>The University of Chicago has never cared very much about respectability. It has insisted on distinction. Neither its faculty nor its trustees would be interested in it on any other terms. If the time comes when it is impossible for this university to set standards in education and to make significant contributions to the advancement of knowledge, there is no reason for its existence. (39-40)</p>
<pre><code> Love of diversity, quest for individuality, zest for questioning, lavish freedom, electric intellectuality, concern for human welfare, openness to thoughtful change, disdain for respectability, breadth of discourse–the list is long, and could be grown longer.
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<p>Robert Pippen, the faculty representative on the search committee that spoke at the Zimmer news conference, exclaimed how surprised he was to hear this [same] refrain time and time again as the search committee visited campuses throughout the nation. </p>
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As we traveled… we would ask for what the view form the outside was of The University, and we would hear… The University is the purist of universities, dedicated to research, creation of new knowledge, and education more than any other, that it is a kind of intellectual hothouse, that the value of ideas and the life of the mind mean more here than anywhere else. We heard this so often that I was tempted to ask, “So what is it you do?”
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