Abstract

The history of universities is a complicated story of challenges and crises through which their nature and character has often been called into question. As we proceed through the early decades of the 21st century, universities are perhaps once again in a precarious state. Have they lost their way? Considering arguments on higher education by the Prussian polymath Wilhelm von Humboldt and the British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, I argue that a central aspect of the character of universities is that they are home to uncomfortable ideas. In this regard universities – perhaps even more now than they were before – are a very particular kind of institution, and very particular places, in which uncomfortable, critical, and conflicting ideas, as well as the academic attitude with which such issues can be approached and appreciated, must be enshrined and protected. This, I suggest, is not just a matter of how universities operate. Rather, it is fundamental to the significance of universities as social institutions that not only produce knowledge and educate, and which are important centres of innovation, interdisciplinarity, and at times unorthodox ways of thinking, but which are also crucial symbols of the values of open and knowledge-driven societies.