Michael M. Crow has served as the president of Arizona State University since 2002. William B. Dabars is the senior director of research for the New American University in the Office of the President and a research professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University. Crow and Dabars are the coauthors of Designing the New American University and The Fifth Wave: The Evolution of American Higher Education.
Rethinking the American research university over the next seventy-five years. How might scholars writing in the year 2100 interpret the academic culture of the early twenty-first century? How might they assess the role research universities and liberal arts colleges played in shaping the social, economic, political, and environmental contours of the century? In Academic Cultures, Michael M. Crow and William B. Dabars convene a diverse group of scholars to imagine the future of the American research university while reconsidering the contemporary academy through the lens of speculative hindsight. Across disciplines, contributors ask whether the epistemic norms, governance structures, incentive systems, and institutional designs of contemporary universities may either enable or constrain society's capacity to confront systemic challenges such as the climate crisis, demographic change, technological disruption, and democratic fragility. The volume interrogates core academic values-free inquiry, peer review, shared governance, knowledge production for the common good-and asks whether they remain sufficient in a world defined by accelerating complexity. Will change within the academy remain incremental, or is more fundamental transformation already underway? Can research universities move beyond inherited design constraints to assume more prominent roles in fostering responsible innovation and inclusive growth? Building on Crow and Dabars' earlier work on institutional redesign, this collection invites leaders, trustees, faculty, and policymakers to reexamine the structures and purposes of the contemporary research university. By imagining how future generations might evaluate our present decisions, Academic Cultures offers a compelling framework for rethinking the academic sector at a moment of consequential institutional change. Contributors: David B. Allison, Derrick M. Anderson, John Seely Brown, Carol T. Christ, Jonathan R. Cole, France Cordova, Michael M. Crow, William B. Dabars, Peter Dear, David H. Guston, Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, Sheila Jasanoff, Roberta R. Katz, Anthony Lane, Margaret Levi, Andrew Maynard, Marcia McNutt, Naomi Oreskes, David W. Orr, Ann Pendleton-Jullian, Sheldon Rothblatt, Abby Smith Rumsey, David J. Staley, Ayanna Thompson
Table of Contents Glimpses from the Futures of Academic Cultures: A Preface and Introduction Part 1: Perspective on Academic Cultures 1. Academic Cultures: Toward Perspective from the Twenty-Second Century 2. Monuments of Unageing Intellect Part 2: Speculative Approaches to the Future of Academic Cultures 3. Beyond the University: How the Coevolution of Cities and Learning Infrastructures Became Dynamic Attractors for a Planet in Transition 4. gAI(a), Or, A Lecture on the History of the University 5. Letters from the Department of Intellectual Craft 6. Romantic Nationalism in the Twenty-First Century 7. Report of the 2100 Commission on Higher Education: Background Paper Part 3: Melioristic Aspirations and Cautionary Tales 8. A Compact on Fire: Higher Education's Knowledge Crisis in the Twenty-First Century 9. Fast Thinkers but Slow Learners on a Hotter Planet: Hubris and the Human Prospect 10. The Liberal Arts in the Twenty-First Century: A Cautionary Tale 11. The Broken Culture of Academic Writing Part 4: Academic Cultures in the Near Term 12. Exit, Voice, Loyalty and the Future of Academic Culture 13. Reinventing America's Research Universities: A View Toward the Near Future 14. Tradition, Cost, and Scale in Contemporary Higher Education 15. A University for the Uncategorizable Postscript and Commentary Author Bios