Redesigning the Ruins

Universities around the world have lost much more than what Bill Readings in The University in Ruins describes as their founding Idea—whether that Idea be Reason or Culture —and their national cultural mission. They have lost their monopoly on the production of knowledge—on its discovery, its synthesis, its evaluation, and its teaching. They have lost very significant public funding. And they have lost their Olympian freedom from forms of accountability that include, but are by no means restricted to, what Readings describes as forms of accounting.