Standing for Reason – The University in a Dogmatic Age

BY John Sexton

Yale University Press, New Haven, 240 pages, $26

Emeritus NYU Law Dean and President, John Sexton offers an optimistic faith statement and challenge about the future of the generic institution called “The University.” His long career as a teacher and tenure as a leader in higher education, coupled with outstanding personal attributes have brought him to the view that the institution of the University is at an inflection point in history. Sexton's embracive personality permeates his important book, and his words and ideas jump off the pages, describing a thesis that proposes a need for more sacred values in the organization and operation of the generic University of the future. His own candidly expressed faith-based view also complements and informs his judgment that dogmatic ecumenism should replace a growing dogmatic secularism in higher education.

I found the book refreshingly persuasive. While religious beliefs and sacred notions are often suspect and even radioactive in the elite academic intellectual world that typically prefers aloof enlightenment attitudes, Sexton boldly pushes against that bias. He is honestly and joyously blunt about his foundational faith beliefs and the character-forming models and factors that have motivated him and brought him to this book of appraisal and warning about the future of Universities.

A couple of creative usages particularly intrigued me. The metaphorical use of “portals” is ingenious as an imaginative projection of a principal theme of the book–embracive outreach and worldwide connectivity. The “portal” concept permeates though boundaries, as I understand the internet shorthand meaning. Sexton uses it cleverly to describe the mystical unification of world-wide campuses that nevertheless somehow retain their parochial atmospheres, as well.

His “Sacred Space” usage beautifully conveys the openness and porosity, not the closure or walling in that separates like a fortress enclosure. This usage is very different from the lately misused “safe spaces” phrase that connotes suffocation of free expression, rather than an openness to ideas; that phrase also implies a false promise of an emotional cushion and comfort-zone shielding one from any unease perceived out of hearing difficult or unwelcome words and ideas. (Pere Teilhard de Chardin, S J, one of Sexton's identified heroes, would be proud, I think, of his adoption of subtle phrasings to enhance the understanding of the complex, cosmological interconnectivity notions that mark Sexton's essential exegesis. The title of Chardin's great work “The Divine Milieu” beautifully encapsulates the essence of a major theme of Sexton's book.)

Of course, a book on a weighty subject like this could be tough to plow through, and even boring for most readers–surely, not the typical summer beach page-turner. Remarkably, it instead rolls up, down and around the serious subject like the Coney Island Cyclone ride (Sexton's unshakeable Brooklyn roots prompt that allusion!). One of the fascinating factoids disclosed in the book is that of the 85 institutions still around today that existed 500 years ago, 70 are Universities. Its importance to humanity is, thus–res ipsa loquitur.

Interestingly, his book complements another transformative work on the subject from the 19th Century by another John at Oxford–The Idea of a University”– by John Henry Cardinal Newman, and Sexton cites and acknowledges its renowned importance. Both books transcend the touchstones of person, place and their respective institutions to the larger concept of the University, qua institution. They unpack the respective overarching theme of the core educational purpose and means of delivery by a University. The genius lens of both authors looks through their own times and direct experiences with prophetic and wise eyes towards the future. Cardinal Newman used a favorite image about truths and faith beliefs–they are like a river that begins as a small spring that rushes forward to widen and deepen through space, time and growth along the journey. That metaphor helps to discern John Sexton's challenge shaped in part, as he acknowledges, by his own cradle Catholic beginning, re-shaped by Vatican II ecumenical fresh-air attitudes.

Socratic Master Class Teacher, John Sexton anticipates some likely objections from skeptics. Should any contrarians dare to step up to challenge his thesis they will thus be met pre-emptively on the “field of debate” (Sexton's love of debate is matched by his admiration for the sport of baseball–indeed, his earlier book is titled “Baseball as a Road to God”). The somewhat defensive segments come across, however, a tad too strongly and are not as effective as Sexton's affirmative case points, as it were, in an opening brief. Also, the repeated invocation of the NYU model, albeit understandable, becomes somewhat redundant in an otherwise excellent and fast-moving book.

One of the loveliest literary conceits of this fine book transcends its subject matter. It is dedicated to the love of John's life: “For Lisa, who formed our world ***.” Many authors do something like that, but unlike most authors, Sexton does not leave his lost love there, lonely on the dedication page. He adds a substantive allusion to her, with luminous relevance, quoting from a television interview he gave on a Bill Moyers show, some years after her sudden death: “I know Lisa still exists as an influence on my life and the life of those she encountered, including, of course, our children. I also know that I have reflected every day on whether I am living my life in a way that is worthy of her love *** Through my faith, I also believe ('know') that she exists as a conscious being and that she is aware of my continuing love for her; and I believe that when I pass from this plane, she and I will be aware of our continuing love.”

That paean to Lisa and his personal faith affirmation appear smack in the middle of an erudite book on “The University of the Future.” That is surprisingly remarkable, and wonderful, too, especially in how he proclaims Lisa's intimate continuing direct influence on his serious professional vocation. His unabashed religious conviction as a point of reference is an unusually open testament to who he is, fully as he sees himself. The author puts his reasoning human mind and his Faith (Roman Catholic) up front in complementarity; their formation (in part, Jesuit) is also inescapably present; his roots (Brooklyn Irish immigrant) are button-bursting evident, no surprise; and, in his piece de resistance, his enduring love of Lisa–as eternally present to him still, through his Faith–is as sweetly and uniquely presented as anything I have ever seen in a book of this genre. Dante the Florentine lover of his beautiful Beatrice would be impressed as to how John Sexton intertwined this core value and influence in his life into this book.

Joseph W. Bellacosa was a judge on New York's Court of Appeals. He is now retired.