Lecture exposes the cracks in the Ivory Tower

Many students at Columbia have been warned to beware the dreaded Ivory Tower, a place of self-delusion where frantic minds dislocate themselves from the realities of surrounding society in the pursuit of ever higher academic achievement. However, the use of this often-pejorative phrase had significantly different connotations throughout its history.

Examining the phrase’s historical evolution on Thursday night at the Heyman Center for the Humanities was Harvard University’s Franklin L. Ford Professor of the History of Science, Steven Shapin. Originally signifying a separated space for spiritual self-reflection, the 19th century transformed the term into an attack used by artistic and literary critics against aloof artists who ignored their various responsibilities to their artwork, audiences, and selves.

The next evolutionary step, Shapin argued, was the exposure of these artistic debates to the fiercely charged political world of the 1930s. In Fascist Italy, artists were recruited by the state to advance a political message and rally the masses. In response, Western politicians and scholars railed against artists who refused to produce similar art glorifying opposing liberal ideals, demanding that they remove themselves from their Ivory Towers.

At the end of World War II, Shapin noted, the new location of the Ivory Tower became the university. Historically a symbol of relative isolation, the lines separating the university from political society had steadily dissolved with the advent of the modern research university and the endless demands for new information from military and industrial forces.

Shapin claimed that the newest critic of the Ivory Tower is the force of the market. Today’s dissenters against the Ivory Tower claim that its inhabitants teach seemingly pointless subjects. Contemporaneous research inapplicable to present societal needs, or those who seek “knowledge for knowledge’s sake,” are, Shapin believes, being forced out of today’s universities by the unceasing demands of Adam Smith’s invisible hand.

Concluding the night’s lecture, Shapin expressed grave fears over the ability of today’s universities to respond to this increasingly one-sided debate against market forces. Professors, Shapin said, need to find new arguments against the notion that all knowledge must be quantitatively measurable, and seekers of the higher pursuit, such as the lovers of knights and castles, need to adapt quickly for the sake of their fields: “We are not defending ourselves well, and we need to learn to do this quickly or we won’t have any medievals left.”