learning. But I would do it for different reasons, and Inwould do it in a different way.nI would do it for one reason only, which is, as I said,nbecause if you want to be a scholar, you have to make anliving, and for many subjects you can make a living as anscholar only in a university. And I would do it not as I havendone, giving half my energy and commitment to studentsnand half to scholarship. I would give all of my energy andncommitment to scholarship and leave over only what Inabsolutely had to reserve for a minimal accomplishment ofnsuch tasks as teaching as I could not decently avoid.nIn sum, here is my best wisdom for the next generation,nas just now it begins work for the Ph.D. and a life ofnlearning:n(1) Scholarship, in published form, is all that matters inngraduate school and in your career beyond. Pay no attention,nnow or later on, to issues of higher education and thenlarger setting of the university. These should not concernnyou.n(2) Do not think of yourself as an educator, let alone as anteacher, but only as a scholar. If you have to make a livingnin the academy, teach as little as you can, to as few studentsnas you can, and avoid all engagement with students. And,nfor the rest, no committees, no politics, no involvements;njust read and write.n(3) Take from the university what it has to give you, butngive nothing more than your scholarship, which is to say,nnothing the university wants or values. Leave the universitynto those who wish, today, to make of it what they will: thenpresidents, provosts, and deans, on the one side, and thenstudents who come and go, on the other. They will do asnthey like, anyhow, so keep out of their way and do yournwork. Use them, as they use you, and you will have a usefulncareer—for yourself and for your field of learning, andnthese are all that matter.nLet me explain how things were the way they were—andnwhy they changed. We who began in the 1950’s and saw then1960’s as assistant professors and the 1970’s and 1980’s asnthe senior faculty and now move toward our final decades ofnteaching and publishing research, took over the dream of annearlier generation and lived through the nightmare of ournown times. Our model of the university came to us as thengift of the generation of the Second World War, whichnbrought America to a position of responsibility within thenlarger world. Universities took on the work of educatingnyoung Americans to address that great world beyond.nProfessors became scholars, not only teachers, responsiblenfor learning more and more about many more things. To donour work, professors had both to learn new things and alsonto teach worthwhile ones, and students for their part hadnactually to study. Demanding, serious times awaited. Nonlonger Mr. Chipps, benign but boring, saying over and overnagain the lessons he had learned from the Mr. Chipps whoncame before. And no more place for the cheering andnsinging and the gentleman’s C.nWhat changed? It was the entire configuration of higherneducation. Colleges became universities, and universitiesnturned themselves into centers of research. Publicationnmattered. Tenure came to those who produced. Studentsnstudied, scholars taught, knowledge expanded and exploded,nhigher education in America set the standard for thenworld, as much as German universities had defined thengolden measure a century earlier—and with good reason.nFrom our universities came the sciences and the scientists,nthe social sciences, the humanities revived by fresh questions,nthe spirit of discovery, the compelling call of vividncuriosity.nIn 1950, at the age of 18, I went to Harvard because, sonfar as I then knew, it was the only university in whichnresearch went on. (Of course, I was wrong, but, for annadolescent intellectual in West Hartford, Connecticut, thenchoices were Harvard, Yale, and Brown, and, among them,nonly Harvard seemed a place where people read books.) Butn10 years later, a dozen New England universities and manynscore throughout the country had gained that ambition tontransform and transcend what in the aggregate formed thengreat leap forward of America’s universities. A new definitionnof the calling of higher education took hold. We werenpartners, all of us on the campus, in an adventure ofnlearning. That meant that students would study, not merelyngain credentials. Scholars would publish, not merely speculate.nTeachers would conduct the classroom as a realm ofndiscovery, not merely as a stage for the rehearsal of othernpeoples’ knowledge and the professor’s opinions of thatnknowledge. Knowledge itself—the definition of what is tonbe learned for the degree of Bachelor of Arts or ofnScience—vastiy changed. Old boundaries gave way. Newnsubjects found entry.nThat was the vision. Along with the best and the brightestnI knew, I was drawn to a life of learning: reading andnwriting, studying and teaching, speculating and testingnpropositions: what if? and why? and why not? That was thenlife I chose, and, given the choice again and the years innwhich to carry it out, I should choose that same life again.nBut not for the same reasons and not in the same realm ofnreality.nOur tide flowed in, in the 1950’s and 1960’s. But itnflowed out again. The ebb tide came in the late 1960’s andnearly 1970’s. We who then were young, the legacy of thenvision of the 1940’s and 1950’s, sustained the hope thatnothers had given us but confronted a world no one couldnearlier have conceived. The great Presidents of the 1950’snand I960’s were scholars, one and all. They also had thencapacity to find the money they needed to build theirnuniversities by finding greatness in scholarship. They alsonwere educators who framed success by the criterion of thenquality of mind—and, in the colleges, even the characternand conscience—of the young people for whom, for fournyears, they and their faculties bore responsibility.nBut in the trials of social revolution and political crisis,nwhen the campus became the battlefield and the collegenstudents the shock troops, the scholars and the educatorsnfailed and were replaced. What most of them could not andndid not do was hold the center. They were educators,nscholars, and teachers, not politicians, not managers, notnplanners of budgets and manipulators of women and ofnmen. And others came along—people thought they werenneeded—who could do those things. We still on thencampus pay the price of the campus revolution of the 1960’snand I970’s. And why not? Ours was the mistake, for wenbelieved when we should have doubted, and we thought wencould by an act of the faculty senate change human nature.nnnSEPTEMBER 1987 125n