S1E74 - Nicholas Dirks - In Search of a City of Intellect

Former UC Berkeley Chancellor and President and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences Nicholas Dirks joined us to discuss his latest book, City of Intellect. We began with an assessment of the free speech movement and the trajectory to more recent efforts by protestors to shut speakers down. The dialogue proceeded from there to questions about hate speech and so-called safe spaces and trigger warnings as well as broader questions of what a university is for, who it serves and what it can and cannot do. We discussed access and costs and the economics of universities as well as questions of diversity and differences between public and private universities and we then turned to a consideration of leadership and the example of former UC Berkeley President Clark Kerr. Our expansive dialogue took up the importance of a liberal arts education, AI and online education, job training in higher ed and the role of community and junior colleges, which Dirks called "the real workhorses," and the apparent revival of admissions tests. Dirks concluded with wise and thoughtful reflections on how universities need to look toward the future and emphasize the transformation of lives, exposure to the world of possibilities and what it means to be human.

Biography

Former UC Berkeley chancellor and Columbia professor Nicholas Dirks joins us to discuss freedom of speech and hate speech and Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia on university campuses along with a range of other issues including scientific cooperation with China; university donors and university ties to corporations; student loan forgiveness and increasing calls for free colleges and universities.  Live and interactive.  Join us with your questions and comments!

Nicholas B. Dirks is a widely respected and highly influential historian and anthropologist, and a prominent leader in higher education. In June 2020, Dirks assumed leadership of the New York Academy of Sciences as President and Chief Executive Officer. In 2012, Dirks was named as the 10th Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley and served in that role until July of 2017. He launched major initiatives in undergraduate education and research collaborations in areas such as neuroscience and genomics. 

Before joining Berkeley, Dirks was the executive vice president for the arts and sciences and dean of the faculty at Columbia University, where he worked to improve and diversify the faculty, putting special emphasis on interdisciplinary and international initiatives. The Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology and History, Dirks joined Columbia in 1997 as chair of the anthropology department. Prior to his appointment at Columbia, for ten years he was a professor of history and anthropology at the University of Michigan. Before that, he taught Asian history and civilization at the California Institute of Technology.

We will be speaking with professor Dirks about his new book: CITY OF INTELLECT: The Uses and Abuses of the University

Conversation recorded on March 8, 2024.