They are, finally, willing to contribute to the process of faculty governance so that the university's future might continue to be shaped by genuine humane values and not simply by what is expedient for survival. Such virtues of academic citizenship are all the more needed today because contemporary research universities like Emory little resemble collegia whose scholars share a commitment to the life of the mind and the transmission of tradition. Scholars in those communities share a common life among themselves and their students, as well as responsibility for administering the school's common interests. But for the most part, they were sufficiently small, self-contained, and centered in a shared intellectual universe to enable their faculties to exercise genuine governance in large matters of common concern. Today, virtually everything militates against that ideal.
Research universities are large, complex, and driven by financial pressures on every front.
So are academic units and individual faculty members, who easily can become competitors rather than collaborators. Senior faculty have survived by adapting. Administrations are naturally tempted to make decisions based on the bottom line and with an eye to efficiency, which is easier if the slow processes of faculty consultation are avoided. Faculty are understandably tempted to civic passivity if not cynicism, since neither the pragmatic effect nor the value of faculty participation in governance is obvious. But precisely because of these circumstances it is important to cultivate a new sense of citizenship.