We Scholars: Changing the Culture of the University by David Damrosch (PDF)

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Never before have so many scholars produced so much work–and never before have they seemed to have so little to say to one another, or to the public at large. This is the dilemma of the modern university, which today sets the pattern for virtually all scholarship. In his eloquent book, David Damrosch offers a lucid, often troubling assessment of the state of scholarship in our academic institutions, a look at how these institutions acquired their present complexion, and a proposal for reforms that can promote scholarly communication and so, perhaps, broader, more relevant scholarship. We Scholars explores an academic culture in which disciplines are vigorously isolated and then further divided into specialized fields, making for a heady mix of scholarly alienation and disciplinary territorialism, a wealth of specialized inquiry and a poverty of general discussion. This pattern, however, is not necessary and immutable; rather, it stems from decisions made a century ago, when the American university assumed its modern form. Damrosch traces the political and economic assumptions behind these decisions and reveals their persisting effects on academic structures despite dramatic changes in the larger society. We Scholars makes a compelling case for a scholarly community more reflective of and attuned to today’s needs. The author’s call for cooperation as the basis for intellectual endeavor, both within and outside the academy, will resonate for anyone concerned with the present complexities and future possibilities of academic work.

User’s Reviews

Opiniones editoriales Review In We Scholars, David Damrosch provides a thoughtful and penetrating look at what he calls the ‘isolation of the disciplines’ in today’s universities. He describes a ‘mix of scholarly alienation and disciplinary territorialism…a poverty of general discussion.’ The beauty of this book is how well and how carefully he does this and then how cogently he presents his solution. First of all, this no excercise in faculty bashing, nor is it in the mode of the sweeping generalization we have seen from others who would help higher education identify its shortcomings. It is, instead, a thoughtful, carefully constructed position. (Charles E. Glassick Educational Record)The argument of [Damrosch’s] book is effective in drawing the reader’s attention to what goes on around us and in stimulating thoughts about what might be done about it. It is gracefully written, informative and concerned in the best sense…[It is] strongly recommended to academics–teachers and scholars–who, more than most engaged in work that can make a difference for our common future, need to think what they are doing. (Frederick J. Crosson The Review of Politics)[Damrosch] writes beautifully about the sociology of academic life, and about key debates in the humanities…His book is one of the most insightful and helpful accounts of the academic experience written in recent years. At a time when everyone writing on these subjects is ideologically loud, his voice of quiet authority is especially welcome. Damrosch establishes as one of his goals ‘to convert people away from the wish to convert people.’ I hope he succeeds. (Alan Wolfe Washington Post Education Review)The interest of We Scholars, essentially concerned with the American university, and with professors in humanities and social sciences, is that it reveals with painful clarity how an ethos in which a sense of ‘community’, whether within departments or across whole universities, is very largely absent, can arise without government pressure. (Fergus Millar Times Higher Education Supplement) Review This graceful and thoughtful book makes an important contribution to current debates about scholarship and universities. (Theda Skocpol, Harvard University) About the Author David Damrosch is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Leer más

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐My university is going through transformational change and I’m rereading David Damrosch’s WE SCHOLARS. The book takes its title from a section of Beyond Good and Evil in which Nietzsche derides academic laborers concerned with fine-tuning disciplinary knowledge and exalts those true scholars who question orthodoxy.In six chapters, Damrosch rehearses the history of the modern university and diagnoses its ills. The problems, as he sees them, are specialization, alienation, and turf, which have become deeply embedded in the way in which universities are organized. Specialization, alienation, and turf, in turn, shape the administration of universities, the conduct of scholarship, and the nature of both graduate and undergraduate general education.Chapters 1 and 2 (“Having it all: The Triumph of Specialization” and “The Academic Economy”) begin by arguing that universities are heterocosms—parallel universes both engaged with and withdrawn from society. And they are parallel universes with a 500-year history accommodates calls for reform as local incremental changes (usually in degree requirements) rather that radical overhaul. Increasing public, governmental and corporate engagement in the last hundred or so years has shifted the focus of universities to the specialized production of knowledge and away from a cohesive community of generalists. One result has been an increased departmental nationalism (as he calls it) and hyper-individualism whereby some faculty behaving more like “resident aliens” than “citizens” (41).Chapter 3 introduces the key metaphor of “The Scholar as Exile,” referring to the socially deviant nature of scholarship—individualistic and at some levels aggressive (think Morris Zapp). Damtrosch traces the implications of this worldview for the work of the university, which he sees as far less collaborative and project-oriented than other professions.Chapters 4 and 5 (“General Education in an Age of Specialization” and “The Culture of Graduate Education”) are concerned with how all this affects students and the curriculum. In Chapter 4, Damrosch takes of us through some of the general education controversies of the so-called culture wars, arguing that the solution is neither Allan Bloom nor let-a-thousand-flowers bloom; rather he proposes engaging students in ways that are more collaborative and that rethink scholarly authority. Damrosch also notes that completion rates for non-science Ph.D.’s is less than 40%–about what one finds in the British public school system. He says: “It is hard to imagine a more devastating indictment of a deeply flawed educational system that its loss of two-thirds of its candidates along the way” (143).Chapter 6 concludes with a discussion of “The Next Intellectuals,” revisiting his message that “scholars should be able to do better at working together and listening to one another.” (187) and for collaborations that go beyond the top-down science lab model and the collaboration borne of personal friendship. Toward the end there is a section called “What’s an Administrator to Do?” where he adds that “A collaborative perspective will really begin to take hold when faculty and administrators learn how to learn from one another” (206).Damrosch’s book is both a diagnosis of ills and a call for a restoration of community and collaboration. Along the way Damrosch dissects the political screeds (from Martin Anderson, Allan Bloom, Dinesh D’Souza, Roger Kimball, Charles Sykes) and incorporates some faculty and administrative insights (from Hazard Adams, Derek Bok, William Bowen, Helen Lefkowitz Horwoitz, Clark Kerr, Jaroslav Pelikan, Henry Rosovsky, Page Smith, Lionel Trilling, among others). Damrosch is clear and direct, though I think he gives too little attention to the continual disinvestment in public education. He is also far less critical of administrators (who merely “wield influence crudely” with actions alternating between the “minimal” and “the drastic,” 58) than he is of senior faculty members (who are members of a “plutocracy” 127). In my experience, many faculty members want to do their best work, but sometimes feel beleaguered by change, disinvestment, mandates, and crises. Nevertheless, Damrosch gets it right when he says that “Changes can be made but they must take account both of institutional histories and the real interests of those who now occupy the institution” (45).What’s sadly ironic is that I first read this book nearly twenty years ago when it first came out and it’s still relevant today.

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