Part 1 - The Institute Libraries - Institute for Advanced Study

What could be expected, if a modern American university
were thus established? The ablest scholars and scient-
ists would be zttrscted to its faculty; the most earnest
students uould be attracted to its l~boratories and semi-
s . ft would be small, as Gilman's Johns Hopkins was
small; but its propulsive power would be momentous out of
all proportion to its size. It uould, like a Lens, focus
rags that now scatter. The bckefeller Institute for
Medical kserch is linited in scope; its hospital con-
tains only sixty-five beds. But its uncompromising stan-
dards of activity and publication have gfven it influence
in herica snd Europe throughout the entire field of mdf-
cal educetion and research. A university or a school of
higher learning at the level I have indicated would do as
much fox other disciplines and might thus in time assist
the general reorganization of secondary and higher educa-
tion,
*A &nard professor writes me as follows: '1 think it: fs
tremendously irportant at the present time to oppose the
tendencies of administrative usurpation of certain academic
functions which can only be properly performed by scholars.
It hzs often seemed to me tkt we might profitably go back,
at least in part, to the systecr.vhich has long and successfully
functioned in Gerrrany -- namly, to have the purely
house-keeping and financial work of educational fnstitutions
carried cut by business ten and clerks, with deans
and rectors appointed from the older men of the faculty for
periods of one ox two years, relieving them for the time
from their purely tezching duties and having, r b concern
themselves during their achinistrztions vith the guidence
05 educational policy in consultation vith a comaittee of
t5eir colleagues. '3
With these words Flexner finished the chapter on American
universities. The proposal does not seem to be a logical conclusion
to what he had just written. The Idea of a Modern Dniversfty already
had outlined the chracteristies a£ the %odern universityn suggested
abwe, and they stood as a yardstick against vhich the revelatfons of
practices in American universitfes were graphically measured. Horeover,
to cite the Rockefeller Institute for Hedfcal Research as an example
'.
he had deplored because it usuall J removed men of genfus and fine
-
seemed forced, for ft really represented the research institute vhfch