A tension exists on college and university campuses across America today concerning how to pursue liberal, rational, open learning and, at the same time, celebrate a spirit of academic community--in short, how to exercise free expression and maintain civility. In this article, the author begins with an exploration of the boundaries of free speech,…

There exists a plethora of writings about citizenship, or "civic virtue," in a democracy. Articles, books, reports, and commentaries proliferate, and the theme is continually stressed in the multiple activities of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). In this article, the author believes that a summary of the…

Each generation of students inevitably must confront anew the fundamental questions of meaning and value that have vexed human beings down through the ages. As students have struggled with these "Big Questions," individually and collectively, liberal education has traditionally sought to provide them with a variety of cultural and historical…

Technology has altered the nature of politics and the understanding of citizenship in some fundamental ways, including the balance of knowledge and power. It is time to accept technology as part of the historical condition and to humanize it. (Author/MSE)

The American concept of religion as privileged and private acknowledges that religion can be culturally significant but suppresses informed public discourse about it. The issue of religion polarizes American education, and its study is skewed at all levels of learning. Religion should be taught as a subject, not a method. (MSE)

Skills and values other than the formal curriculum's content are implicitly taught through the traditional approach to the liberal arts, and some of these may foster development of qualities that are dysfunctional in our society. (MSE)

Current social, racial, and economic conditions in the United States are viewed as creating opportunities to undermine democratic values. A historical consciousness that acknowledges different interpretations of the past is seen as a prerequisite for maintenance of democracy. (MSE)

"Intellectual community" as commonly used is based on a notion of intellectual commonality. However, the liberal arts college has become more diverse. Until higher education can offer some models for combining the values of diversity, it ought not to promote the conventional ideal of intellectual community, which favors some values over…

"Ivy-clad towers" in academia still exist today and always, they require their students to spend considerable time in community service to learn about social justice. The poor almost seem to exist so that academics can study them or so that university students can elevate their own consciousness by serving them for a short period. As…

A review of college courses on the philanthropic tradition includes descriptions of programs at Babson College, Chapman College, the City University of New York's Bernard Baruch College, Georgetown University, Illinois State University, Northwestern University, Regis College, and Seton Hall University. (MSE)

If college faculty and institutional commitments to academic integrity were to achieve a status similar to that of academic freedom, there could be a transformation of the intellectual community. Faculty must see academic integrity as a complement, not a challenge, to academic freedom; a closer affinity of the two may further energize both. (MSE)

Evidence that thought is a displaced social process contradicts the assumptions that the mind is a mirror of nature and thought a private, individual process. A curriculum that involves learning to identify beliefs, to analyze and express beliefs socially, and to understand and form communities of knowledgeable peers is described. (Author/MLW)

The college, public or private, contains two separate realms. The public realm is the sphere of life bearing on the values sought by the college, and the private realm is that not bearing on those values. The scope of these realms is determined by the college's implicit and explicit purposes. (MSE)

The social context of the debate over liberal education is discussed in terms of the pressures on deans to phase out underpopulated fields of study, the pressures on educators to produce measurably competent graduates for an ever more technological economy, and a general questioning of liberal and humanistic values. (MLW)

Innovative approaches to values/ethics education in higher education suggest renewed commitment to human values. Two models of values education are values-across-the-curriculum, which assumes that values education is a responsibility for the institution's education programs as a whole; and civic education, built on a conception of the habits…