This is John Batchel, a conversation with my colleague Peter Berkowitz of the Hoover Institution and educator

about how the universities changed over the latter part of the 20th century,

from teaching about the world to teaching change the world, says Peter.

I ponder this. Listen to Peter's case as to the switch and a possible background to what we've seen these last

years on college campuses, the kind of activism that is destructive and anarcho, and yet

it would be consistent with what Peter Berkowitz presents here is the shift over.

Now, the professors who were trained in the 1960s and 70s, they're retired now and still influential.

And their students, puzzle.

Here's Peter Berkowitz to explain the shift in education mission in the late 20th century.

After Nixon, after Johnson, after Kennedy, somewhere in there. The boomers. My people. Here's Peter.

Well, as you know, this is a long story, but here's just a crucial chapter in it.

These professors, these generous-minded professors admitted students to graduate programs in the 1970s

who brought a new opinion about the purpose of scholarship and the purpose of teaching.

The other view, the one in which you were educated and in which I was educated was, the purpose of education is to understand our world better, the human world and the natural world.

The new opinion was that the purpose of education is to change the human world and the natural world. The new opinion was that the purpose of education is to change the human world,

that education is politics by other means,

both our scholarship and both our role in the classroom is to promote progressive change.

That was the big shift, and it was accelerated dramatically when the students of the

1960s entered the graduate programs of the 1970s.