A response to The Harper Review’s winter 2025 proposition, “Should the ivory tower endure?”
Dear editors,
The University of Chicago attracts me superficially for its “Aims of Education” speeches before the start of each school year—a quirky combination of wittiness and intellectual intimidation. Yet I have no pretenses about any of the speakers whose long careers in higher education have infused them with confidence in education itself, enough to keep calm and guide their students, despite knowing the many challenges those in higher education face. I am taking a leap of faith when I search for that confidence in education, and I know there is a big chance I won’t find it. So when those in the humanities attempt to indulge us in rosy imagination of some grand motives for the study of the humanities, perhaps we can give education a break, and derive some less grand meaning from it.
This is the best of the times and the worst of the times—therefore, to talk about a reclusive ivory tower seems too much like an evasion of pressing realities. But let us not forget that our ancestors have endured periods no worse and no better than what we have now. The repetitive nature of history in the face of the fate of education is striking. However, it is a contingent choice whether we choose to merely behold the omens of history, or whether we choose to actively bestow upon ourselves—the “capable men” and “truth-seeking” students—the mission of human progress and don the armor of truth and moral consciousness, which makes the people inside the tower, us, the natural leaders of others outside the tower.
A passage from Hu Shih, a Chinese scholar-diplomat who spoke words no one liked, is apt as a commentary on this dichotomy—whether at this time of the year, we choose to actively spread our mission, or hide and think in a tower. Hu Shih wrote the following in response to the righteous indignation that Chinese students studying abroad felt when Japan presented the Twenty-One Demands to China in 1915: “Let us apply ourselves seriously, calmly, undisturbedly, and unshakenly to our studies, and prepare ourselves to uplift our motherland, if she survives this crisis—as I am sure she will—or to resurrect her from the dead, if it needs be!” At that time, he was a serious patriot taking an alternative route to treat student activism, as hinted by the title of the passage, “A Plea for Patriotic Sanity.”
A bit condescending, isn’t it? But Hu Shih’s worries were not entirely unjustified. As a student, I know I am part of the most persuadable, mobilizable, and weaponizable group that is willing to apply itself to a mission, project, or movement so long as it can free itself from the tiresome classes of abstract linear algebra for some time. The breeze on the Quad, with my friends beside me, arching towards somewhere: my childhood dream is suddenly fulfilled. I am instantly a knight-errant, a revolutionist, and a hero.
I haven’t found my confidence in education, as I said, but it is not only in the realm of education that I haven’t found it. I have little confidence in any of the grand narratives laid elsewhere—the glory of bygone days is but a harbinger of future decay. We have watched towering mansions be erected and then watched those very structures crumble to dust. Such is the inevitable cycle. It seems the more splendor a tower appears to have, the grander its fall will be.
Let’s not forget the state architects of the countless dynasties of China, under the name of Confucianism, who performed the modality of the scholar-official type. There are modern examples too. The founding fathers of the two most “broken,” yet formerly powerful, nation-states were once just like us, armed with some ideals and eager to accomplish some greater cause. We are all here at this institution on some teleological path, seeking answers to questions. But there are many other places where the skills of state-building, consent-manufacturing, and mobilization are needed, such as on the battlefield of both human and artificial intelligence’s words and bodies. Why can’t we find a place to have a break, think, and not-so-eagerly apply ourselves, for some time? Perhaps, as one of the “Aims of Education” lecturers Andrew Abbott suggests in the subtitle of the Chinese edition of his book, *The Future of Social Sciences*, higher education is merely “a resting place before moving on elsewhere.”
Unconfidently,
En Lei
Image: Unidentified Artist, Scholar Contemplating Towering Rock, ink and color on paper, 20th century (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).