Newman at Harvard, the idea of a university to Shure E.O. Kour.

This side of the Enlightenment and the American and French revolutions,

innumerable eminent philosophers, theologians and scientists have written on the subject of the university.

Many in the context of the foundation of new universities

or of the fundamental reorganization of major extant universities.

Among these eminent thinkers, arguably, John Henry Newman,

is not only the most fascinating, but also the most

relevant.

For he continues to be a distinct prophetic critic, and thus a painful thorn in the flesh of all

the 20th century and 21st century strategists of instrumentalizing the university

and subduing it to certain ends extrinsic to the university itself.

Modernity is a history of successive attempts of varying success, to submit the university to ends

extrinsic to its own nature, either the ends of the modern bureaucratic nation state, the ends

of the Communist Party program, the ends of the Nazi ideology, or the ends of the free market consumer capitalist

and technocratic democracy. By anticipation, Newman's idea of a university questions

and challenges all of these modern instrumentalizations of the university.

And precisely this is the reason for the ongoing relevance to sure a encore

of Newman's idea of a university, especially also here at Harvard.

John Henry Newman's life spanned the 19th century,

a time of tremendous social, political, cultural, scientific and technological change.

He was born in 1801, the age of carriages, front-loaded muskets and sailboats.

He died in 1890, the age of the first transcontinental express trains, machine guns, and ocean steamers.

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