Universities are meant to be producers not just of knowledge but also of (often inconvenient) doubt. They are creative and unruly places, homes to a polyphony of voices. But at this moment in our history, universities might well ask if they have in fact done enough to raise the deep and unsettling questions necessary to any society.

As the world indulged in a bubble of false prosperity and excessive materialism, should universities--in their research, teaching and writing--have made greater efforts to expose the patterns of risk and denial?...Have universities become too captive to the immediate and worldly purposes they serve?

--Drew Gilpin Faust, The University's Crisis of Purpose