Agent of Democracy - Society for College and University Planning

Agent of Democracy
• Third, it is embarrassingly self-congratulatory. It implies that the
history of the pursuit of the land-grant mission is one of complete,
continuous, and unambiguous success.
• Finally—and for me, most important—it is apolitical. Instead
of using a political language of public relationships and work
involving people with different types and levels of interests,
knowledge, expertise, and power, the prevailing view employs
a mechanical language of responsive public service that focuses
on the provision of technical solutions to technical problems
through instrumental transactions between active and allegedly
“unbiased” experts and passive, needy clients. Such a
language obscures the politics of scholars’ engagement in the
world beyond the campus. It also reinforces the self-congratulatory
story line about land-grant history. 4
To illuminate and reconstruct a democratic tradition of public
scholarship in the early history of land-grant colleges, we need to
do two things. First, we need to position the story of the origins
and development of land-grant colleges within the context of the
larger story of the academic revolution of the late 19th and early
20th centuries. Second, we need to adopt a different conception of
the historical nature and significance of the land-grant mission.
Instead of viewing this mission as public service, we need to view it
4 My characterization of the prevailing view of the historical nature and significance
of the land-grant mission is not a so-called “straw man.” It is consistently reproduced
in academic literatures. See, for example, Mumford, The Land Grant College
Movement; Ross, Democracy’s College: The Land-Grant Movement in the Formative Stage;
Eddy, Jr., Colleges for Our Land and Time: The Land-Grant Idea in American Education;
A. Nevins, The State Universities and Democracy (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois
Press, 1962); J. B. Edmond, The Magnificent Charter: The Origin and Role of the Morrill
Land-Grant Colleges and Universities (Hicksville, NY: Exposition Press, 1978); W. D.
Rasmussen, Taking the University to the People: Seventy-Five Years of Cooperative Extension
(Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press, 1989); J. R. Campbell, Reclaiming a
Lost Heritage: Land-Grant and Other Higher Education Initiatives for the Twenty-First
Century (Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press, 1995); National Research Council,
Colleges of Agriculture at the Land-Grant Universities: Public Service and Public Policy
(Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1996); Kellogg Commission on the
Future of State and Land-Grant Institutions, Returning to Our Roots: The Engaged
Institution (Washington, DC: National Association of State Universities and Land-
Grant Colleges, 1999); and K. Ward, Faculty Service Roles and the Scholarship of
Engagement (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2003).
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