On the Academic Social Contract

“As such, it must begin with the University of Berlin, which was established in 1810 as an institution with the dual tasks of knowledge creation and dissemination (that is, research and teaching). Here scholars were free to pursue Wissenschaft, or scholarly research, in exchange for training a new civil service and an army that would serve the needs of the state and the aspirations towards nationhood. I would add further that if the academic social contract is constant, the partners of it evolve with time. As the society that the university served evolved, the university co-evolved into such forms as the central state university in Berlin, the land-grant university in California, and the privately funded urban university in Baltimore, and each time, the academic social contract was reconstituted. The premise is that once an academic social contract was exhausted, academic entrepreneurs rushed in to find new partners, formulate new ideas, and establish new institutions—sometimes even outside the university.”

Emily J. Levine, “University at the Crossroad,” jhiblog.org/2022/01/26/university-at-the-crossroad-an-interview-with-emily-levine/.