Religion

The vast majority of universities originally founded in Europe, in the Middle Ages, actually had a very special exemption explicit in their charters which actually gave them independence and immunity from the secular authority in the States in which they were located, to some extent in the same way the Church had. They had a kind of "benefit of clergy", and this applied to all students and faculty, to the extent that many honest citizens tended to steer clear of University districts for fear of being raped, robbed and murdered with total impunity by the students, and even the faculty, therein. We can see this in the ribald behavior of students in Chaucer's Canterbury tales. We can see this in the behavior of the fifteenth century poet-scholar Francois Villon, perhaps France's greatest poet, author of Ou sont les neiges d'antan "Where are the snows of yesteryear". Villon was certainly a robber, rapist and murderer, as well as being a brilliant poet and scholar, but, as a student he was able to get away with it! As an adult, however, he was forced into banishment on pain of death!

On a more positive note, this independence gave the University students and faculty a freedom of speech, thought, action and experiment that probably was quite helpful in terms of fostering independent thought and creativity, of a type that could be quite useful to the state. We can see this in the early genius of Roger Bacon, in England, or Thomas Acquinas, in France.

These days, of course, Universities are the ultimate bastions of the status quo, serving the state, and submitting to the state. To a large extent, Universities have become precisely the opposite of what they once were, and, what they were originally intended to be -- bastions of independent thought and action. We can see this in the "zero tolerance" to sexual harassment rules on college campuses, resulting in the dismissal and humiliation of tenured professors merely for an off-color remark in class. Tenure used to be iron-clad, it was virtually impossible to fire a tenured professor, the idea being that tried and true scholars should have freedom and security. Not so, these days -- political correctness rules!

Of course, one could argue that total social conformity means no social progress, creativity or originality at all, and, many futurists these days are complaining that we aren't getting any progress of real value in science or technology, to some extent because universities and colleges aren't doing their job -- producing new and original ideas. So, what if we'd never departed from the independence of universities? What if students and faculty at universities could still rape, murder steal at will, as well as saying and thinking whatever they wanted, and not having to be politically correct? Wouldn't they be more productive and creative, and would science and technology be much farther along than it is now?

Interestingly, I think we have an echo of this Middle Age University ideal in the classic National Lampoon comedy Animal House (1978). Perhaps the most controversial sub-plot in this film involves a nerdy freshman who is trying to "get laid", and finds a cashier in a grocery store who likes him. He gets her drunk, but, he's too nice a guy to take her while she's dead drunk. So, he finally sleeps with her, and, she announces "I'm 13!" This got a huge laugh back in 1978, of course. But, in a way, this does hearken back to the Middle Ages, and the true original conception of the University -- total freedom! Obviously, Animal House couldn't possibly be made today! But, are we paying a price, in terms of social, scientific and technological progress, because of this?