originally published 5/1/2007

Professor C. John Sommerville describes the increasingly marginal influence of universities in our society, and why they seem to be of no substantive relevance to people outside the school, with the exception perhaps of sports teams. He argues that this is because they are secular, while clarifying that he does not think religious schools are the only ones with a right to exist. Enlightenment thinking distrusted religious authority, but Sommerville argues in his book The Decline of the Secular University (Oxford University Press, 2006) that universities will continue to be irrelevant as long as they insist on avoiding sustained reflection on what it means to be human. He sees in the academy the beginnings of a criticism of Enlightenment ideals, which he hopes may soon lead them to rediscover the relevance of religion.

13 minutes

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