The New Yorker:

Maybe not as we’ve known them. But, in the ruins of the old curriculum, something vital is stirring.

By D. Graham Burnett

You can want different things from a university—superlative basketball, an arts center, competent instruction in philosophy or physics, even a cure for cancer. No wonder these institutions struggle to keep everyone happy.

And everyone isn’t happy. The Trump Administration has effectively declared open war on higher education, targeting it with deep cuts to federal grant funding. University presidents are alarmed, as are faculty members, and anyone who cares about the university’s broader role.

Because I’m a historian of science and technology, part of my terrain is the evolving role of the university—from its medieval, clerical origins to the entrepreneurial R. & D. engines of today. I teach among the humanists, and my courses are anchored in the traditional program of the liberal arts, in the hope of giving shape to humans equal to the challenge of freedom. But my subject is the rise of a techno-scientific understanding of the world, and of ourselves in it. And, if that is what you care about, the White House’s chain-jerk mugging feels, frankly, like a sideshow. The juggernaut actually barrelling down the quad is A.I., coming at us with shocking speed.

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