Kerr Sees 'Intellect' Playing Key Role

"Intellect has become an instrument of national purpose," and the uses made of it by the East and West will be extremely important "in the war of the ideological worlds," Clark Kerr declared last night in his final Godkin lecture.

At the same time, the Eastern and Western "Cities of Intellect form a potential bridge between the two societies, as well as a source of weapons," Kerr said. "To the extent the Eastern City of Intellect grows and makes contact with the Western, it almost inevitably changes its society."

In citing the momentous role to be played by the "city of intellect" in the future, Kerr drew on his previous discussion of the enormous growth in government subsidies to higher education, and he growth, in general, of the "knowledge industry."

'Knowledge Industry'

Domestically, the "knowledge industry" now accounts for 29 per cent of gross national product according to a recent study, Kerr said. It could become, in the next half-century, "the focal point for national growth," as universities continue to become centers of the "ideopolis"--complexes that include not only school buildings but industry, research institutes, cultural centers.

Kerr noted that the effect of the university on national life will not be solely, or even most importantly economic. Universities can initiate a "new dimension of service" by replacing decaying central cities as the great cultural centers of the nation, Kerr said. This would be in line with the tradition of public service in American universities which began with the land grant movement and continued to expand into politics and other areas.

Kerr said that the university will continue to become more involved in the life of society in other ways, as Newman's vision of the university as an "Ivory tower" grows dimmer. "Extension work is really becoming 'life-long learning,'" he noted, and added that television now means "the boundaries of the university are stretched to embrace all of society." In addition, university facilities, such as libraries, and centers for the performing and visual arts, will become more important in the nation's cultural life, Kerr predicted.

While "Intellect" becomes an instrument for national policy, and the university becomes more involved in community life, grave problems still remain for the internal affairs of the university.

Chief among these problems, Kerr said, "is the revival of undergraduate teaching in the university." Students are quietly staging a "counter-revolution" to recent faculty emphasis on research, instigated in part by government expenditures after World War II.

"How to treat the individual student is a single unique human being in the mass student body, how to establish a broader range of contact between faculty and student" are problems being pressed by an ever-increasing student population. Kerr also asserted that educational policy must receive more attention, and the undergraduate must, in general, receive the attention now being lavished on the graduate student.

'Unified Intellectual World'

A second great problem, Kerr noted, is the task of creating a "more unified intellectual world," and striving toward the spirit manifest in the medieval "community of masters and students." Knowledge, however, continues to be fragmented, and a "sense of the unity of all knowledge is still a very long way off," Kerr said.

A third problem Kerr, as the president of the nation's largest university, is particularly concerned about is college administration. He is a forceful advocate for decentralization of decision-making power and creative innovation, and urged more cooperation between allied, but now separate, segments of the community. He noted particularly in this regard the current "chasm" between the teaching department and the research institute.

Aristocracy vs. Egalitarianism

Kerr reiterated a concern voiced last night that overly-aggressive egalitarian impulses might channel federal funds away from the large universities that have been getting most of it. "How may the contributions of the elite be made clear to the egalitarians; how may an aristocracy of intellect justify itself to a democracy of the common man?" he asked.

Imbalance A Good Thing

In a similar vein, Kerr warned that federal subsidies should go to those areas of endeavor that are most vigorous at the time, and most in need of help. He said that "imbalance" has often been conducive to maximum creativity, as when the physical sciences received the large bulk of federal aid after World War II. Kerr asserted that the government must remain flexible in these matters, and cited the biological sciences and the creative arts as two areas that might become increasingly worthy of federal, and university concern.

Change From Outside

Returning to another crucial point in his lecture series Kerr said that traditionally great changes in the university have come, as they have come in the recent past, from outside influences. He characterized the collective faculty as an archconservative body, while noting that individual members are often important innovators. The president, he said, should be a mediator working with ideas, eliciting them from his colleagues and "throwing in" his own. He rejected the idea that a university president, whether in regard to educational policy or any other problem, should have a "plan" to be imposed on the faculty and university