 Let's begin. Let me welcome everybody. Welcome to the Future Trends forum. My name is Brian Alexander I'm your host on the forum's creator, and I'm your chief cat herder for the next hour of conversation We've been looking at the history of higher education from time to time in the forum We haven't really plunged deeply into it, which is why I'm delighted, delighted to introduce you to Emma Levine. Her most recent book Allies and Rivals is a tremendous exciting look at reframing what we know about the research university Without without trying to do it too much injustice It's a look at the parallel evolution of the research university in the United States and in Germany over the past 200 years It constructs a fantastic way of rethinking almost everything we know From academic freedom to the relationship between government and academia to the role of individual faculty members To how these institutions evolve change and innovate over time I can't recommend this book hardly enough and as part of their recommendation. I'm now going to bring the stage professor Emily Levine from Stanford University Welcome Hi Welcome to the future. It's so great to be here I'll call you professor Levine once and then I promise not to do it again. Okay, that sounds perfect It's so good of you to join us. Thank you, especially during the end of semester where things are no doubt very chaotic and Indeed and you'll have to excuse my voice as I have the end of semester grip as well. Oh, no Oh, I hope I hope it's just a grip and yes indeed Well Emily Please let us we have a tradition on the forum when we asked people to introduce themselves We don't ask for a CV because this is the future transform We ask about your future and specifically what are you going to be working on for the next year? What are the big topics or the big projects or in your case as well the research and the classes that are uppermost in mind for you Right, thank you so much Brian again. Thank you for that generous introduction and thank you for having me So to answer your question I was I think I'll begin by saying something about my scholarly background and the goals of the book that you just held up allies and rivals on the origins of the modern research university and What I see is the potential for this work for change makers in the university So I'm an intellectual historian by training which may sound a bit esoteric But I suggest to you that there's two ways in which my work is oriented towards this future So first I excavate the origins of ideas that often go unquestioned And I do this by putting them back in their place and time in which they were formed and received making us more critical Participants in the culture around us And second I account for how institutional change occurs and If you want to make change in the university, I would argue that you need history to understand the university's capacity to evolve so If it's okay with you Brian, I was thinking I could give you a sense of how I do this with the institution and the I And the idea of the modern research university in which many of us make our home And what consequences this story of origins and emergence might have for the future I can do that in about eight minutes or so if that would well if you want to start on that Yeah, yeah, I could I could get started and then I and then I'd like to and I like to see what people questions people have for you Because they may already be waiting to pounce. Okay, perfect so so The questions that I was sort of asking myself when I thought about the future Is why are teacher teaching and research together under one roof? How did this come about and why is it so hard to change flash? Should we change it? so so The history of the modern University that I lay out in the book dates to the University of Berlin Which was established in 1810 and it was founded in the wake of War to recreate as was said at the time intellectually what had been lost politically and those create those conditions Created two needs to train a new civil service and an army so that Prussia wouldn't lose any more wars And to operate as an independent institution of knowledge for an aspiring nation The main innovation that was to accomplish these goals was to create an institution that would unite the advancement of knowledge through research with its dissemination through teaching and This bundle became known as the modern research University and as I chart in the book It was a wild success inspiring an American adaptation that combined the German version focused on graduate education With the English undergraduate college already prevalent in the US to produce What sociologists sometimes call a hybrid? Institution that would be annulated then the world over and what's interesting That we might want to discuss I think is that from the moment it was founded in Germany and iterated upon in America There were contradictory cries that the that this new university was both already firmly established That is here to stay and also inefficient and totally insufficient a paradox that Persist to this day And so what we see over time if we look at the last hundred years Um as sort of a cycle of discontent in which new institutions are founded that aim to address that inefficiency By devoting itself exclusively to one task or the other teaching or research And that's the kind of pattern that I think you know as it should sound pretty familiar I think to us today So if we look at say for example, um the period right after world war one The interest in the german model begins to wane and a window opens for academic innovators who want to devote more attention to teaching Um and one-on-one instruction that they feel has been overshadowed by the emphasis on specialization and research And so in the 1920s We see the liberal arts colleges have a sort of revival of sorts We see john dewey's stock go up and the and the sort of bill humphun humboldt's stock go down And we get colleges like bennington college sarah laurence college reed college black mountain college all dating to this this period At the same time we get education reformers coming from the other side Like someone like abraham flexner who ridicules The way that the americ university has has become sort of what he calls the department store of knowledge And he says we need new institutions of research because we're not doing this good enough and he Begins to found the institute for advanced study in princeton, which would open in 1933 And bring top scholars in their fields without the distractions of teaching To ensure the american preeminence in research And in fact, he has in mind a kind of max plank institute in america Which itself had already been founded in 1910 to create more research A space that was outgrowing the university so that germany could remain competitive internationally But what's interesting is that despite these sort of additions to the system The model of the the university that combines both of these tasks Remains remained and has remained. I think the gold standard And and and I I think for our purposes we might think about how the inefficiency of that system has huge implications um in particular for the undervalued and unsupported half of the Sort of bundle teaching We should we should and so and I see maybe that there's some questions that have appeared in the We have we have several and and by the way I have to get I have to get this joking You speak of my alma mater many times in the book the university of michigan and and like this Yes, yes There's some inefficiency there. Uh, we had a quick question from uh, greg shuckman who asks Was in johns hopkins university considered the birth of modern research university And I said, yeah, it's chapter two buddy, but but Everyone do you want to do you want to say a bit more about that? Sure. I can say something about that Exactly so so one crucial way is in in my telling that universities adapt is through taking sort of Opposing threats institutions that are opposing threats and then integrating them into their institutions to form New institutions and as I said, this is a process that sociologists sometimes call hybridization And the institutions that results are hybrids. So johns hopkins is a perfect example of it and in my telling it is the first american iteration of The sort of ideal type in the max vaporian language of the modern research university that one that would have the most longevity as you as you say And and the story I think goes something like this in the 1860s and 1870s Daniel quit gillman another incredible education founder that i'm hoping to bring out of obscurity as a model for an academic entrepreneur He saw that american boys and it was mostly boys although some Young women as well. We're starting to go abroad to germany to get graduate education Which wasn't available in the u.s. And he begins to advocate for creating german style Graduate programs at home and he starts to do this and tries to do this at yale in the 1860s by kind of grafting a research university onto yale And he has some success. He raises the standard of admission. He introduces the phd But he's only able to take it so far He then goes out to california which gets a mention in the book the university of california and he tries to do this at a new land grand institution um, but he finds that he's just um And he's fighting too much with the board of regents And the agricultural lab lobby has is too much power and so he kind of gives up there and then he gets his sort of winning ticket as greg says um in the form of a Unprecedented amount of money at the time. It's seven million dollars, right? Which was the most money by far that had been given for a university at the time half of which would go to a new university in valtimore And it would be privately funded and there would be no strings attached So gillman could kind of create the vision that he wanted and what he does as you're right greg is he combines the english style Your liberal arts college or english style college which gives the ba at the time with the german style graduate school and it's that Rebundling of these two sides research and teaching that becomes the winning combination as i said the modern research university And it's american form and of course, that's the one that then would be emulated the world over That's a fantastic cancer emily That's um, you just nailed that and uh, greg. Thank you for for the question By the way, you should all be able to see on the kind of bottom left-ish part of the screen A mustard colored box that says allies and rivals click that and that'll take you to the university press behind that Greg does go on to say we continue to import german models literally with the adoption of the throne It's in the u.s. Well, it's an interest. It's a point. It's an important point because In innovation doesn't stop and i think that's sort of it's an evolving story So, you know the the formation of the modern university in germany and in berlin in 1810 Is not the end and and john's hopkins in 1876 is not the end it quickly What what i try to convey in the book is that there's this is an ecosystem of what i call competitive emulation In which education reformers are going back and forth in this period between germany and america that are the big players And in particular between cities like baltimore Putting in berlin and yes, then an arbor and and and soon palo alto and they are exchanging ideas about how to organize ideas and then coming up with new institutions that then um Will themselves then be emulated in different contexts And so i think when one of the things i try to do in the book is in moving away from say biography of particular individuals Like like i know it's not a hagiography of daniel koikeillman Or of iberham flexner and it's not an institutional history of john's hopkins anymore that it's an institutional history of university of michigan We do have many wonderful Books like that out here already. What i try to do is by showing the whole system um Illustrate that process by which that evolution happens in that competitive emulative Relationship and i think that that process tells us something not only about john's hopkins or about the rise of germany and america As new world powers at the end of the 19th century, but it tells us something i think about how innovation happens And that's the story i think we can take with us forward And there's a lot of great stuff about the different ways this works and and Friends, uh, i just want to make sure that you know that at the bottom of the screen You can press one of those two buttons to uh give us a question In fact, we have one question right now. I'm going to be so bold as to beam on stage And this this emily is in part because the person about to beam on stage is fluent in german So i'm no doubt. No doubt the puns will fly thick and fast Um I will rapidly get into trouble trying to speak german at this point. I'm highly rusty Um, but i did have an english language question for you Um, how do we reconcile? One of the problems with the way the german system works and this clumping at the university of of research and and and teaching and so on is that the german system has multiple layers and levels and so, um It can lead to an elitist attitude toward education And the Germans have akademisches deutsch. I mean, it's a whole other language and most terms can't understand, right? And the united states has always at least or at least since the 1950s has uh given a nod to Equality of opportunity equality of education mass education In it in a world driven by technology uh and the kind of things that you know, we expect just even Regular workers to be able to do these days, you know, is that model relevant anymore? And uh, How do we, you know, avoid the dangers of this, you know, ivory tower so to speak? Give you a good example. Another thing is that the system the german system for a long time was sexist my mother Uh was kept out of the gimnasium because she was a girl and they said she couldn't do it And so she went to the real estate and never got to go to college until she came to the united states And then she graduated summa cum laude from a small liberal arts college here When she was 40 So, I mean, this is the problem with the german system is that it's very elitist And and I think that that combination of research and teaching Focuses on it tends to push people in the direction of the research side of things And oh by the way, if you can keep up come along, but if you can't sorry, that's so sad So I was wondering if you could speak to those dichotomies between the american and the german systems Yeah, so those are two both really excellent questions tom and um, I hear you talking about two different sets of issues One is the tension between meritocracy and democracy that I think um are still actively in in kind of friction in our system And then the second is is the question of Of how Who gets to belong to these institutions and how perhaps that question has changed over time as the system has And the institutions have opened Increasingly to more and more people. So let me take the second one first particularly with the with the example of co-education Um, because I think one thing that I tell in this story is that when you look at that The story of co-education in the transatlantic context actually some surprises are Revealed, so so first of all as I mentioned it wasn't just boys who were going to germany in the 1870s in the 1880s And in particular in the 1890s Young women start to go as well And one of the reasons they start to go is because they recognize that the phd is now the holy grail In institutions of higher education and to get the phd would mean To have a certain kind of credential as we would say today that has the capital That would make this old white men who were the gatekeepers of the system take them seriously And at the time In german universities, which of course were organized regionally Women were allowed to be gas terror or auditors in the university And in some places they could also get degrees on a case-by-case basis Um, and what they were able to do was they were able to get if they could find a sort of open-minded professor Um, um, there were some of them in leipzig and many of them in zürich They could get them to agree to take them on in cultural history or in mathematics And they would kind of move around from institution to an institution And they until they could get themselves the phd and come home and martha carry thomas who would go on to be the president of Swarthmore was one example of this In the 1880s and what thomas and other feminists at the time realized that they can do Using the system of competitive emulation. They already get this is how things evolve Is they realize that they can put pressure on american institutions by saying look German institutions are actually starting to open up And so You're going to lose us also just like you lost the young men to german institutions in the last generation Unless we account for women as well. And so Co-education becomes a kind of hybridization of the threat of losing the women and of trying to incorporate these new students into the institutions and certain education reformers Like the founders of swarthmore See how this could be Valuable and they they pursue this through single sex education and thomas actually says she wants swarthmore Sorry, i'm saying swarthmore, but i mean brenmar. Excuse me. I'm sorry. I meant brenmar Pardon me. So brenmar, of course. She wants brenmar, of course and in pennsylvania to be the Hopkins of for women the place where women can go pursue A phd is and so she elevates women's education through single sex education and it becomes a kind of hybridization Of the old model with the new that introduces women to the system And so there's a way in which I think you can see the history of institutions as sort of Innovations coming actually from tapping undervalued talent like women And this would also happen with with jews at hopkins and later it would happen with african-american education Du Bois also Creates institutional hybrids at the modern at the margins of the ecosystem Um, and and I think that this cycle, um, you know, isn't yet finished today and there's still ways in which we can Can be better at identifying Untapped talent to make our institutions more accessible as well So that's one kind of way in which I think you can think about The story in particular about co-education the larger. I think existential Question is still with us today The german system as you said Didn't have democratic aims It was elite and intended for a small segment of the population and what what gilman As well as eliot and other presidents us president us university presidents at the time Were aiming to do and abraham flexner as well was to sort of wedge A german system intended for a select few into a country that had democratic values and it's a kind of It's not such a smooth transition right they create they do a lot of gymnastics in order to sort of Defy this they they they they invent a term called the aristocracy of excellence and they Begin to talk about the need for raising standards to keep american institutions competitive and You can say that they prioritize this over any real efforts to democratize the system Outside that tapping undervalued talent as a source of innovation that I mentioned before And so I think that where we see this tension continue today is precisely in that bundle of research and teaching Where research follows those values of meritocracy You know we we lavish More funds on the best and the brightest in the hopes of advancing the frontiers of knowledge And yet teaching has this sort of the value system of democratic uplift that you know We have this purpose to sort of uplift the whole society And education is expected to do a lot more work than it is in the german or european system at large And and I think that's a tension that um Is one we need to spend much more time talking about and figuring out how to address and I think the origin story helps to show how that gets um How it gets solidified into our system and why it's so hard to reverse That's yeah, great. Yeah, a wonderful answer Brian, I just have a quick question for you and I don't know if you the answer or or maybe Emily knows but Are there more german students in the united states as international students or vice versa? I don't know. Oh today. I don't Anecdotally, uh, I've always encountered more german students here than american students in germany But I that's totally anecdotal. I don't have the data on it at all I didn't know if you guys had but my father has a phd from a german university and And he's an american so There's a counter example for you, but so that would fit into a long tradition that this book describes I kind of lived that tradition Thank you very much. Thank you very much. If if you're new to the forum. That's an example of Easy as can be to to do so please click the raise hand button if you want to follow tom Emily quick language question. You said aristocracy of excellence In the early 21st century when germany launched the excellence initiative. Was that supposed to echo that older term? I mean not that not that precisely. I don't think but I but I do think that that what you see and I think this Sort of addresses in some ways the cultural shift that tom was just referring to Which is that if if germany is sort of this is the incumbent and america the sort of innovator in the in the first part of the hundred years that I I'm talking about from 1810 to say Well really from 1810 to 1900 and maybe even pushing 1910 what we begin to see around 1900 is that Is that germans start to come to america to learn from americans as well? Right and so the innovation for example of co-education which Will come in the form of stanford and university of chicago as answers to the The single sex education of brinmore that we were just talking about Co-education is this is a sort of innovation in america that germans like felon's client a mathematician who comes to america at the end of the 19th century is looking at and saying hey We have this shortage of teachers in germany and I have a shortage of graduate students And there's all these aspiring female mathematicians I'm going to convince convince the prussian ministry to let me take them on And I'm going to start advocating for co-education. So we see co-education then sort of sort of swim Upstream the other way and you see a similar thing start to happen with with ideas like private philanthropy That is the the private funding of Of scholarship, which is very much present in the debates around 1900 and in the first decade of the 20th century in which The germans are beginning to Found institutions outside of their university A system like the institute devoted to physical chemistry and then the max plan constitutes which Of course would first be called the keiser willhelm society or keiser willhelm institute And in that story you see you you begin to see a two-way exchange You know, um, it's the story is typically told as americans import the german model Into america, but my point is actually that That that that change happens through bi-directional exchange and we see that already among germans and americans And so you know rather than seeing this squarely as You know the sort of germans are on top and then the americans are on top I think there's more subtlety in that story that perhaps we would need to tell the story that Tom was was kind of alluding to so yes, you have examples as you were saying Brian something like the excellence initiative that began in 2013. I think Which was A nearly explicit Initiative to emulate the iv league in germany that is create a more tiered system with a group of institutions That were considered elite that would get more funds As a result and therefore the better students and better researchers In some ways kind of splitting the system into a kind of meritocratic and a democratic System more along the lines of what we were talking about you see then the active use of that english language And in fact, I have a picture at the end of the book of a banner that was hung In berlin that says Excellence in research and teaching across the university of berlin. So now we no longer see sort of for shung Dwork vision shaft or build on we no longer see this sort of german language that sort of Was was was taken on by the americans and often had no clear english Translation we now see the english words like excellence Used in the german cop context which which have an american connotation That is not just a word, but rather encompasses the whole system of merit meritocratic for justification for You could say inequitable distribution of resources Right. I'm now now Adapted and influential in the german context Well, that's fantastic and uh as as a as a literature language person I'm astonished that you were able to create that beautiful arc from the word excellence. Um, that was uh, that was perfect. Thank you We had a quick comment that came in uh for tom's question the uh iie the Institute for international education should have the data that you were looking for tom That comes in from bill loop bill lacy at uc davis Speaking bill lacy has another question and we just flashed this on the screen You focus on two key functions of higher education research and teaching What place do you see for a third key function outreach and engagement or application of knowledge? Good question bill. Thank you Yeah, that's an awesome question bill and i'm so glad you asked it because of course there are three tiers to the modern research university research teaching and service And the service piece is really a misnomer because I think it really encompasses the relationship between Universities and they're outside Everything outside its walls for lack of a better word Um, and one of the big themes in the book and i've been exploring recently with colleagues at stanford is what I would call the academic social contract Together with my colleagues mitral stevens and caroline winterer We now have a a grant at um internal grant at stanford called recovering the university as a public good and the sort of idea of this um this project is that universities have always had reciprocal relationships with their host societies and this is something that we forget especially as we talk about the move to online Right one justification for university patronage and support Has been that universities and societies serve each other's need in an implicit agreement And that's what what I call in this book an academic social contract and we use this language also mitral stevens And I have written about this in the new york times and we talk about this in in in our in our grant and our in our Framing of this public conversation as well And what we mean by this is that this contract reconciles academic ideals like the ones we were talking about like the pursuit of of pure research Or open scholarly discourse For example with the practical needs and particular ambitions of patrons be they governments Be they civil society organizations be they cities or municipalities or private donors And I think this is a different framework from how scholars and typically write about the university We hear a lot I think from the scholarly side of things about the university ideal abstracted from the world But it's really important in my telling of the university That that universities are are nothing without Hard compromises and it's better to think about the history of the university Not as a history of an ideal but as a history of compromises or contracts iterated by leaders over time And there isn't one successful model for a contract or another gillman He strikes a balance with a very successful one in baltimore And by the way if he had had his druthers, he would have done away with undergraduates all together He wanted nothing to do with them. This is very clear from the archival record He wanted to create a pure research institution, but his contracting partners wouldn't go for it He knew that the railroad magnets Of being a railroad and the funders of the institution Wanted some purpose some place to for their young boys to go to be minted Before they went into the family business. That is they they needed an english college that would serve as a kind of finishing school And so he creates that bundle. I was talking about earlier of the undergraduate and the graduate institution as in some ways Answer to that compromise and an expression of an academic social contract And what you see over time is that when contracts expire or they they sort of run out they lose their meaning Leaders have to make new contracts and find new partners and form new institutions and arguably we're going through one such period right now In uh in the chat about half an hour ago the excellent lisa durf asked are we at a crossroads? right now And uh, I I love that the answer that you just gave is yes Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think that historians are you know historians are typically not good at predicting the future Or having you know, we don't have crystal balls, but but I do think that 2020 Has a lot of the features of are you going to show me a crystal ball brian on dinner? Yes You do A future right, um Oh, I'm getting a little feedback. Sorry. I think I laughed too hard And so yeah, I mean, I think 2020 has a lot of the features of one such Crossroads, so you know a historically way rooted way to think about that is that the 30 year period You know, that's really volatile that I write about from 1875 to 1905 has Sort of the three has three aspects. I would say of this But maybe it's the trinity of the conditions of possibility for change It has external conditions, right? That is things we can't control that sometimes come in the form of war industrial revolution heightened international competition It has the forces of internal change Right. It has the the the desire for um new spaces new ideas New ideals to talk about the ideal part of the story and then it has the leaders, right? It has the visionaries Without whom none of this in my opinion would happen because institutions don't have a life of their own Rather individuals like gillman like humboldt like de bois and martha kerry thomas are required who have the vision who have the capability to um to sort of navigate the complex terrain required to strike successful um deals and negotiate winning academic social contracts, and I think You know as we as we survey the scene today I think we we clearly have the external shock to the system in the pandemic and in the racial Pan crisis or endemic in our country um But the question is do we have the right ideas and do we have the right leaders? And are we training the right leaders To be able to be in a position maybe to take advantage of that external condition And and create new academic social contracts. That's I think what we Personally what way I think we might be focusing on you say that and and I can't now Not hear the university of berlin trying to recover prussia after My napoleon Um exactly this is the place for uh for everybody else's questions And here's one from uh leslie harris at bucknell university Who who pressed the right button? Who asks if you could talk about the history of tenure in Is this something you discuss in your research and yes, the answer is world war one as this whole with everything But please Emily, please go ahead. Yes, it does world war one ends up being you're right It's um a catalyst for so many things Which is great for a european historian like myself I think it's part of why I became a european historian, but in the book and in um, also I had a short article in the washington post over the summer About the origins of academic freedom, which kind of presents a bit of a capsule history of what is chapter Seven in the book. I tell the story of what I call the invention of academic freedom and indeed it's it's a story about how the the War which begins to contract the space of of of The exchange of ideas and put limits on what scholars can write about and what they can say Precipitates the founding of the a up in 1915 and its declaration on academic freedom and tenure um, and and in fact the story that I tell is also a story about how The Mistranslation of the idea of academic freedom and um And lern fry height and lair fry height which you know Time we could do a whole other genealogy Of the way that academic freedom and the german incompetent encompassed both the freedom to teach As well as the freedom to research in america becomes first of all it drops the It um, I'm sorry the freedom to teach and the freedom to learn in america It drops the freedom to learn right that is we're not really in 1915 concerned about students And their ability to travel from university to university and sample the wares of professors and take the forces they want Rather, we're really concerned about protecting the right of professors to be able to say what they want and to not be Um fired for example for expressing pro german sentiments in 1915 1619 17 And so we we sort of enshrine in the code of ethics of our of our professional our professional code of ethics A different version of academic freedom than had existed in Germany and the one that we enshrine is one that focuses on the right of professors to Pursue the research that they want and teach what they want, but we do it in this way that I would call um negative freedom Following isaia berlin. It's not a positive freedom to a particular set of values As I would argue it was in germany where the university was a more free place than the than the political culture outside of it Rather, we sort of organize it in this american way. That's kind of consistent with our notion of civil liberties As a freedom from rather than a freedom to so it's a freedom from constraints rather than a freedom to a particular set of values And this this creates a set of problems that boy are we seeing play out right now Because first we we tie academic freedom to tenure In a sort of circular logic not really addressing the population that will Effectively today does the bulk of the teaching right at universities that is non-tenured professors But also because we never really agree On what those values are For which academic freedom is in place sure We say things like the freedom to teach the freedom to learn but but we don't identify what they are What's in and what's out, you know, and that's I think where we see a lot of polarization um Around the debates of academic freedom Happening today as a result of that muddled you can say genealogy I just wanted to share this in the in the chat and in fact, I'll I'll Everyone can see this This is just we did a terrific discussion with hank reichman About academic freedom and he's just for me for my money the the world's go-to go around this. He's just a fantastic guy Thank you. Thank you, emily for that terrific answer We have a couple of us coming on the pike And I want to make sure that everyone gets a chance to ask them And there's one that greg shuckman had and I want to make sure I get the right one here greg asks What about germany's system of tracking for students to pursue universities and how that serves as an advantage or disadvantage For developing the scientific workforce that is needed to fuel an innovation focused economy Do you want me to read that again or uh, yeah, maybe the middle part of it. I can't I don't see it So it would be It came in the chat and okay, I can't find it. Okay. I'll About germany's system of tracking uh, and how that impacts is that advantage or disadvantage for developing a technology and science based innovation driven economy Yeah, so it's a great it's a great question and Again history offers some sort of peak into Why this happens this way and and what the repercussions might have been As you say in germany by tracking let's just say first of all we mean we mean that germany has a tiered educational system with A higher tier being the gymnasium that is the sort of college bound system And historically one needed an abitur to enter the university, which means that if you didn't go to this higher education bound You couldn't even do the university, right? Um, and if you did the other sort of Real shul or grun shul at track you would be tracked for a technical institution or a vocational institution um rather than a university and what this meant in principle as the americans were sort of importing this system was or what this meant in practice was that the americans didn't have A gymnasium that was sort of a feeder into the university And it's meant and some reformers said at the time Um, you know, how can we even begin to reform the university if we don't Reform our secondary institutions first because in practice the gymnasium operated almost like the english style college It's sort of like a ba and and in america we sort of We forgot that part of the reform. It sort of just fell out, right? And and and the reforms of higher education and k12 education kind of went in different directions and on different And and on a different tracks and so the result to get back to the question I think is that germany has This track system and in fact today we look to germany sometimes as an example for um as a positive example of providing say Other alternative paths. We might call them pathways to vocations that are alternatives to higher education That yes fee the kind of high tech economy, you know jobs at bmw and and you know working and in as technicians and in the sort of High end technology industry Whereas in america we say we have this democratic system as we talked about before But in fact We might argue that we have the tracking. It's just opaque Um right to to the observer. So if you take a kind of High school like the one that my son will likely go to menlo atherton that combines menlo park and atherton um and different streams of affluent and lower income communities You know anecdotally people will tell you that that high school Is in fact tracked um and that and that there's a track for students who are going on to stanford and and other Colleges like it and that there's a track for whom within menlo atherton for students for whom that that um That high school degree is the terminal degree But since we say we don't have a track system You know, we don't have we don't provide arguably Good pathways for those students who aren't going to do that college You know college bound track and I think that's that's something that again We might our reform conversation might benefit from thinking about That problem in a transatlantic context Yes that content I already this is just all kinds of possibilities um Friends we have about nine minutes left, which is shocking because we have so so much to cover I want to make sure that we get in a couple of these questions. So emily. There's about four questions Ah, so I I hope you get like a quick whack at each one um the excellent keel doinbsch a doinbsch excuse me uh argues uh or asks Uh, what do you think about the threat of disaggregating? assessment uh from education from teaching And what do you think about that as a as a challenge to higher education? Yeah, I mean, I think this goes back to the story I was telling right about about bundling, right? Which is that historic and unbundling, right? Which is that there has been Disruptors talk about unbundling the university and and in many ways It's just a different word for those challenges. I talked about that came earlier creating institutions that Deal exclusively with one function or another teaching or research to which you add Credentialing and you know, we've seen attempts to do that today to remove teaching in particular to other Fora to deliver it online to deliver it in boot camps to deliver it through other modalities That are supposed to be more accessible and most cost efficient But as you say, I mean, I think as your question implies credentials turned out to be I think As a number of analysts have pointed out the sort of missing piece. So Coursera, for example You know was sort of talking the language of disruption during the beginning of muc mania in 2012 But now Arguably they're partnering with universities talking about giving credentials You might even say that they're sort of rebundling The university because they found that unbundling it completely doesn't work You know, and you can see a similar thing happening on the other side of the Atlantic There's a new movement among max plank Institute Which I said in 1910 was the first institution To sort of unbundled university to remove research because it was out growing the university I give it more money more labs and more space But now max plank institutes around germany are sort of trying to create graduate student programs like cs at max plank, which takes a bunch of max plank institutes and Sort of says well, we're going to have a graduate program Of course, they still need the university to provide the credentials So they're partnering with them But they're again rebundling the university Because they realize that research teaching and the credentials that come with it in fact had a logic and had an institutional force that is undeniable Emily that's a that's a mini seminar of an answer in just a couple of minutes. Thank you Keel as always. Thank you for your laser like focus on the question of assessment We have a question coming in as well from whoops This is from David hul at national university And David asks with the rivalry between us and germany research institutions Where do you see the issues of social and racial justice? Sure. So I think this goes back David. Thanks for your question to the discussion we were having earlier about the problems of squeezing a sort of meritocratic system into a democratic political culture And I think that at best what we see is a cycle of innovation in which um in which Visionary leaders See the ways in which they can strike academic social contracts by bringing together the self-interest of institutions and the innovation that comes from tapping undervalued talent And you see this with opening of the institutions to jews and then the opening of institutions to women and the opening of institutions to african americans And I think you see it a little bit in the language of identifying talent in opening the institution to students from lower socio-economic backgrounds and so I think this is an important point if Both about competitive emulation because I think when you start to see other institutions doing it Whether it's within your country or elsewhere if they're now getting Access to better students that you don't have access to well, then you're motivated to make those changes as well And that's certainly what happened Um and michael stevens tells this story in his excellent book about admissions With the called the creating a class which is about how elite institutions began to open up their um their admissions pools to um to non-white students to um To students from lower socio-economic background And that there was a sort of domino effect that happened among institutions where one institution begins to redefine Talent and the creation of elite class in a particular way that's more inclusive making the term diversity part of You could say a metric on which on which top universities are assessed. So now all universities have to do that um And perhaps that's a more cynical way of looking at the ways that institutions diversify But I think that if you're looking at institutional change that is historically a way that that that happens Uh, David, that's a great question. Thank you and and emily. That's a that's a very very rich answer Uh, lisa has a suggestion for you. She wants you to tackle in chinese universities next Not going to but but but that actually brings it to a question that I'd like to ask Very we're at the very end of time here So many so many observations about how american university changed and developed I was really struck by how you found that both Germany in the 19th century and america in the 19th century had a kind of parallel federal structure, um, as opposed to the very unitary centralized states of say britain or france and how that that led to a kind of uh competitive spirit That really flourished I was struck as well by your your emphasis on academic entrepreneurs people you call the in-betweeners Like like clarker in a sense, uh, who are able to negotiate between these different contradictory forces and produce something new And I I love your idea of competitive emulation Um, I'm looking at those and I'm I'm as a futurist. I'm looking ahead Do you do you see that kind of federal spirit or structure still at work in the us? Where do you see the emulations headed? I mean lisa's point towards china? I think is a very good one. Um, should we for the next century, for example, be thinking about the us and china in that kind of relationship Yeah, point us a little ahead towards uh towards the future of academic innovation Absolutely. Um, so I don't think that that that there's a one-to-one relationship between the federated structure and innovation What the sort of perhaps unchanging principle is is that Competitive emulation that that you that you name, right? And what's important for that is the open exchange of ideas Even and especially with one's rivals, right? So I think that's where china comes in here, right? Because what americans rarely Acknowledges that the chinese are following a path like our own It's in the 19th century nearly 10 000 americans traveled to study in germany exchanging advances And trying to emulate those at home china, of course regularly sends some 350 000 students to american universities today and of course um for those of us who i had the chance to visit china in 2017 and talk with my colleagues there in In in beijing and in beida about this Never have I had an experience that was felt like it was a reenactment of a historical play because the chinese is there talking about How is it are we going to become not only receivers of knowledge, but also producers of knowledge? Echoed almost uncannily the language of the previous century and and if I had a history if I had us from That crystal ball I think that that would be a good indication that It's not that's necessarily going to happen Right china is the new america that that's certainly we should be we should have our ion that dynamic And we should be careful. I think to be advocating for the open exchange of ideas rather than shutting down our borders Because that is the only way that knowledge advances um It's not through a tit for tat and it's not through sort of intellectual protectionism Um, emily, I didn't know you had a background in theater because you you took on you timed that last word those last words perfectly Inclusion I love that you ended on the theme of an open exchange of ideas in part because that's what the forum here is based on But it's a very very optimistic forward-looking way to conclude and and we are out of time Uh, emily, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much What what's the best way for people to keep up with you? And what you're working on over the next couple of years Um, oh, thank you. This is this has been wonderful. It's been a pleasure. I've loved the questions and I would um If people want to keep up with me, they can look at my site. I suppose emily jay levine dot com where I have Links to some of the articles I mentioned that I've written recently like the history of academic freedom in the washington post Or a piece that I wrote for the la times a few weeks ago precisely about the importance of universities invoking that global Promoting the open exchange of ideas And hopefully I'll put a link also to the recording of this event Um on your youtube channel and they're looking forward to being staying part of this community Well, thank you. Thank you so much. Um, I just put your uh, your website in the chat We'll have the recording up as soon as we can And in the meantime Thank you so much. Uh, please, uh, continue the fantastic work. This has been a real delight and uh, and above all Take care of yourself and stay safe. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much, brian Okay, take care and thank you so much for the wonderful questions everyone Well, these are wonderful questions, uh, everybody and uh, I have to second our guest in that But don't go away yet. Let me just point you to what's coming up over the next few weeks Uh, first of all, uh, we have sessions coming up on disabilities Eco media literacy the climate crisis student debt libraries and careers Minority students on campus a whole series of great topics just going to form that future of education dot us to learn more Uh, if you want to keep talking about these issues if you're really concerned about tracking or about assessment Or about this open flow of ideas, please hit us up on twitter. There's me brian alexander and schindig events Uh f tte is the hashtag and of course my blog would be glad to hear from you there brian alexander dot org If you want to go back into our archive and take a look at our previous sessions on the free flow of ideas on academic freedom On tracking just head to our archive the tiny url.com slash f t f archive And once again, thank you for the great conversation I'm really happy that we're able to join emily uh and to learn from her and to appreciate her book Please grab a copy of allies and rivals. I can't recommend it hardly enough And for the rest of you as we run out of 2021 Please keep up the great work. Please take care of yourselves. Be safe and until next time. I'll see you online Bye. Bye