Religion, the Public Good, and the Research University

I am delighted to be with you today and to have this opportunity to sharewith you some thoughts about “Religion, the Public Good, and the ResearchUniversity.” Of course it is important to acknowledge at the outset that anyone of these terms probably merits at least the full thirty-five minutes of thisspeaker’s time and also the fifteen minutes allotted today for discussion. SoI am not going to attempt to do justice to any one of the three. Rather I aminterested in their intersection and what that might itself create.Is there a place where religion, the public good, and the research universityintersect? I believe that there is; and I propose in what follows totry to describe that place for you. As an intellectual location, what I will bedescribing is a mental rather than a physical space. It is attitudinal. Nonethelessit most emphatically is a space. It is of interest itself, but it is also, toresort to metaphor, the “core” for what makes civil society possible. So thismental space has purely intellectual interest, and getting it right is in importantways a matter of thinking clearly and well – it is a fun puzzle to workout. But it also is absolutely vital to how we live together. Its magic is thisdual character, and its existence is a matter of preserving both parts of thatcharacter.I need to note two qualifications about what follows. My frame of referencein this talk will explicitly concern the American experiment in civilsociety. I am aware that this is a limitation. I also fear that it could be a danger.It is a limitation that I am insufficiently versed in other versions of civilsociety. For that I can only acknowledge my ignorance and invite those whoknow more to contribute. It is a danger in that it provides an opening for misunderstanding.I hope I shall not risk this danger in what follows, but let mesay here that none of what follows is meant to imply in any simple sense acommitment to the American model of democracy for the entire world community. I love American democracy and consider myself privileged to be acitizen under its governance. But the world is a complex place, and I amunwilling to operate on the assumption that the form of government I enjoyand deeply love is axiomatically the best for all peoples in all places ...