The influence of gown on town

 I read Russell Jacoby’s essay “The Takeover,” wondering how two people could see the world in such different ways.

The subhead on his essay tells his story: “Self-righteous professors have spawned self-righteous students and unleashed them into the public square.”

Jacoby and many others are convinced that political ideas hatched in academia are poisoning the country.

My side of the story is that university towns need more involvement from the scholars, not less. In my experience, the real influence of university folks is more like this:

In the 1800s, Galveston, Texas was periodically ravaged by outbreaks of tropical disease. When Yellow Fever hit in 1867, about a quarter of the island’s population abandoned their homes and fled. About 15 percent of those who remained died. Can you imagine that kind of terror today?

Galveston is the home to the University of Texas’s first medical school. The professors used the emerging knowledge in their fields to improve life on the island.

For example, the scientists at the medical school were the first to understand the connection between cholera and contaminated water. They argued the controversial point that houses in the poorest and most segregated parts of town should be connected to the public sewer lines. They pointed out that sewage could go only so many places on an island and that infectious microbes really couldn’t be expected to stay in one part of town.

The professors had other suggestions for controlling other kinds of diseases. You could see those suggestions as expensive or intrusive. You could see them, I suppose, as self-righteous, a case of the learned putting ordinary folks to the outrageous public expense of extending sewer lines.

On the other hand, it’s been a long time since 15 percent of the residents died in an epidemic.

I think that a lot of smart, capable people work in our universities. But universities have become vertical institutions — silos. Typically the scholars are so focused on their work and the workings of the institutional hierarchy that they don’t get out into the broader community and apply their learning to address our common problems.

Everyone who lives in a college town — professors, retailers, folks in the trades — benefits from common goods: good schools, good management of public finances, good police work. How do you get those things?

It’s hard. But it doesn’t help if you keep some of your most gifted citizens locked in  ivory towers.

• Source: Russell Jacoby, “The Takeover”; Tablet, Dec. 19, 2022.