The Idea of the University: Newman and Now

Professor Stefan Collini will be speaking at this year's John Coffin Memorial Lecture at the Institute of Historical Research (a member institute of the University of London's School of Advanced Study)

Discussion of the nature and role of universities tends to revolve around a familiar dichotomy between the 'useful' and the 'useless'. Such discussion also tends to a rather ritualised invocation of John Henry Newman's The Idea of a University as some kind of justification of the notion of a 'liberal' education. In this lecture, Stefan Collini explores what is at stake in these discussions by re-visiting Newman's text. Newman's concerns, when viewed historically, can appear extremely remote from present circumstances. But the lecture will suggest that by attending to some of the less obvious literary characteristics of Newman's writing, we can perhaps still draw some inspiration from it about the most effective ways to characterise the intellectual purposes of universities in the face of contemporary demands for 'usefulness'.

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