Those needed to teach, advise, persuade, weigh arguments

those urgently needed for the work of perception

work of the poet, astronomer, the historian, architect of new streets

work of the speaker who also listens

meticulous delicate work of reaching the heart of the desperate woman, the desperate man

—never-to-be-finished, still unbegun work of repair—it cannot be done without them

and where are they now?

—Adrienne Rich (1991) An Atlas of a Difficult World: Poems 1988-1991.

 

While An Atlas of a Difficult World finds its putative origin in Rich’s anger over the senseless destruction and loss of life during the Gulf War, it is a broader lament about American culture and the collective inability to reconcile its historical legacy of division and devastation. Rich concludes her thirteenth book of poetry by imploring us to begin the urgent work of repair. Her mix of despair and hope are echoed some fifteen years later by Jonathan Lear (2006) in Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation. Told through the story of Crow cultural devastation, Lear offers his own insight into how our contemporary vulnerabilities breed a pernicious intolerance and will require a uniquely visionary path forward. Lear begins his work with the words of the last great Chief of the Crow Nation, Plenty Coups, “When the buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground and they could not lift them up again. After this nothing happened.” The terms of mere existence had so altered that the future was inconceivable and, indeed, unimaginable.

Together Rich and Lear have offered me one way of understanding these past two years. In the wake of a global pandemic which laid bare long standing, visceral racial injustices, and which increased both savage economic precarity and extreme political polarization, I have wondered if we have the creativity, the will and the radical hope that will be required to divine a fundamentally new way forward. I have often considered how higher education ought respond to this moment.  As my colleagues and I have struggled to navigate the ever-changing menu of remote, hybrid and in-person modalities; as the stress, exhaustion and disillusionment of students became ever more palpable; I thought, if ever there was an opportunity for radical change, it was now.

As an ethicist, too, I wondered whether and how the moral obligations of higher education institutions to society should change. Ought universities play a more active and visible role in restoring democracy or eradicating structural inequalities? Ought new moral goals for and with our students be in development? Could the pursuit of practical wisdom be more centrally featured? Put differently, might human flourishing become more of a driving force behind the institution of higher education and could cultivating moral purpose in our students become a more salient learning outcome? I have imagined (and indeed hoped) the notion of good education would take on a new meaning.  Surely these past two years have taught us that higher education needs to be far more than knowledge transfer and skills development. Redressing these wicked systemic problems will require citizens who are surely competent but also courageous, and creatively compassionate. They require citizens who can see what is wrong and act to do what is right. They require virtue.

Thus far there has been much talk of new hybrid forms of education to ease the financial strain of college education for struggling institutions and families alike. For elite colleges whose endowments ballooned and for smaller colleges who encountered crushing new financial challenges, there has been lots of talk of organizational reform, new systems and administrative procedures. But beyond processes, procedures, and budgets there has been largely silence. Might these two years that have forever changed our world leave higher education largely unchanged? Will nothing happen?

In a recent conversation with a student—an extraordinary student with whom I worked closely as an undergraduate, graduate student and post doc over the course of more than a decade—I was struck by how much the priorities for her life had changed. She was always passionate about justice and I always thought her education afforded a well-honed sense of moral imagination as well as a set of skills and practical wisdom to act upon that imagination. She was both an academic star and a passionately effective crusader for justice.

When we met most recently, she had taken a new job. She found the work important and impactful, but its most critical characteristic was that it allowed her to work from home on a schedule entirely of her own making. It gave her freedom and control in an unpredictable world. I confess I found this preference unexpected. While I understood and even admired the decision to prioritize working in one’s pajamas and in ways that made more time for loved ones and non-work pursuits, I could not help but lament how that might limit all the good she might otherwise do in this world—in all the places that shoes are required. Like so many individuals and institutions, she had, in response to an overwhelming and devastating two years, narrowed her world.  Would the institution of higher education do the same? Would higher education back away from this opportunity—out of fear, cynicism or lack of imagination—to lead a new generation and forge a new way of thinking and being in the world?

For me, her singular choice signaled something almost foreboding about this collective moment. I realized that the past two years have brought us individually and collectively to a turning point, a place where we can decide to make our world smaller or larger, where we can retrench or where we can swing for the fences. For more than a century, universities have been seemingly both impervious to significant change and ever changing at margins. To steal a line from David Tyack and Larry Cuban, they are continuously tinkering toward utopia while remaining largely the same.  This moment is an opportunity to fundamentally and boldly reimagine our shared goals for higher education with moral purpose and the cultivation of character as the center. I just hope we are not too disheartened, fatigued, frightened, unimaginative or risk averse to see what is required to make the most of it.