Saul Bellow Quote

The university, in a society ruled by public opinion, was to have been an island of intellectual freedom where all views were investigated without restriction. … But by consenting to play an active or positive, a participatory role in society, the university has become inundated and saturated with the backflow of society's problems. Preoccupied with questions of Health, Sex, Race, War, academics make their reputations and their fortunes. … Any proposed reforms of liberal education which might bring the university into conflict with the whole of the U.S.A. are unthinkable. Increasingly, the people inside are identical in their appetites and motives with the people outside the university.

p. 18 - Introduction to The Closing of the American Mind (1988)