Yet, in this community known as Wabash College, the students, faculty, and administration have created an environment where creativity can flourish, and they have done this by resisting the forces of conformity that have engulfed so many institutions of higher learning in this nation. Wabash has distinguished itself to me as an institution creatively out of step in five distinctive ways. Wabash is a college that is driven, but it is not agenda driven. This means there is no sacred canon of knowledge that can never be questioned. In fact, such an attitude is contrary to the meaning and purpose of colleges and universities.
Academics have a peculiar obligation in our society to study what they deem to be important.
Anything less would be bowing to someone else's agenda. This debate at Wabash is part of the larger debate of the role and purpose of education itself. Recently, the country has engaged the issue of the purpose of education head-on. Books, such as Cultural Literacy, bemoan the loss of unity within American culture. This point of view maintains that the American cultural ethos is being lost within the present pluralistic enterprise of education.