The Mission of the University: A Symposium in Six Parts

Chris Redmond is Director of Internal Communications at the University
of Waterloo.

“As closely as the printed word can,” says an introductory note, these 91 pages reflect what took place on a Thursday and Friday in October 1984 as Queen’s University invited a few notables to give addresses, and others to comment on them, all by way of celebrating its installation of a new Principal.

The printed word here provides an uneasy mixture of prepared speech texts and transcribed comments, whether or not they are relevant and clear. Entertaining material and sober ideas are both marred here and there by bad proofreading (“scholarships” meaning bursaries, in place of “scholarship,” meaning research) and made difficult for the reader by small type and a two-column format, presumably for economy’s sake.

Jill Conway’s address on the political and economic issues facing higher education unfortunately comes first in the book — unfortunately because, though the subject matter is of course vital, few of the unconverted will willingly make their way through it. They might be more receptive if primed by, say, Margaret Atwood’s funny address about the place of the arts in a university, or even the interesting lecture by historian William McNeill. Ostensibly speaking about “The University and the History of Ideas,” a dull and academic topic if ever there was such a thing, he attracts and keeps the attention by talking about “clashing opinions,” intellectual heresy versus “mindless custom,” and by throwing in some perceptive comments about the way daily lecturing forces a researcher to think, while daily research provides new ideas to work into a lecture’s synthesis.

Henry Rosovsky of Harvard is in this book, speaking about a university as an international institution — a perception that is about to become a Canadian controversy — and physicist Erich Vogt speaks on “research issues.” Finally, there is the address of the new Principal, David C. Smith, in which he makes a brief bow toward all these subjects and the panelists who helped discuss them.

There are nuggets, but it is not clear who will want to mine them. People whose business is university education have no shortage of books in which these important issues are set out, and it is difficult to summon the enthusiasm to read another one. Doubtless the symposium itself was an exciting event, striking sparks in all directions, but the proceedings give the definite impression that you had to be there.