Diminishing the Idea of a University
D.V. Kumar | 04 July 2025 | The Hindu
While speaking of the idea of a university, one actually speaks of an “ideal”, that is, what a university is expected to be doing to justify its own existence as a university. As John Henry Newman, a 19th century British academic, argued, a university is the place where a certain type of valuable activity is supposed to be happening. It is the place where meaningful and productive exploration of ideas is expected to take place, where truth is sought and where critical imagination is deployed to engage with issues that confront society (which can be taken as a valuable activity).
At a fundamental level, the essential duty of a university is to search for the “truth”, however unpalatable it may be. If a university is simply busy trying to follow the dominant narratives prevalent in society uncritically and unreflexively, it will necessarily lose sight of what it is supposed to look for — the truth…