"Why can’t Cornell just go back to being a liberal arts college?”
This is what a Cornellian friend asked me when I expressed deep concern about the challenges facing universities—which include federal blocks to research funding, waning public trust, shifting relations with the government, and a cultural revolution brought about by technology and AI.
I started to formulate my response about the critical value of research and innovation on a university campus, but something else was bugging me: we never were a liberal arts college.
The great American novelist Robert Penn Warren once said that “history can give us a fuller understanding of ourselves … so that we can better face the future.”
What is Cornell, and what can it offer the country and world? To even begin to approach this question, we must first understand and appreciate the historical trajectory of universities in the U.S.
Read the full 'Chime In' essay on the Cornellians website.
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