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Academic Duty by Donald Kennedy, Harvard University Press,
拢19.95/$29.95, ISBN 0674002229

The Calling of Education by Edward Shils, University of Chicago Press,
拢11.95/$14.95, ISBN 0226753395

IT really does make sense for academics to be paid to do whatever they like.
Who wants to be taught by someone who is bored by the subject, or to give a
grant to someone who thinks of research as just another job? And, of course,
politics and ideology should never interfere with academic inquiry.

But as these two books point out, newly appointed academics quickly discover
that with academic freedom comes a raft of unexpected problems. In fact, much of
the time academics cannot do what they like. Administrative duties push aside
teaching and research. And outside funders, such as corporations and government
agencies, frequently demand an account of what academics are up to, further
constraining them.

In their separate ways, both Donald Kennedy, former president of Stanford
University, and Edward Shils, who worked all his life at the University of
Chicago, show how academic privileges also entail
responsibilities鈥攁cademic duty, in other words. Kennedy鈥檚 readable
collection of essays arose from his seminar for doctoral candidates on the
challenges they would face later in their careers. He covers getting a job,
teaching and supervising students, conducting research, publishing papers and
working with outsiders鈥攊n communities, companies or government. It gives
pause, though, that Kennedy resigned in 1992 amid controversy over funding of
鈥渙verhead鈥� luxuries for his official residence.

The Calling of Education reprints Shils鈥檚 lengthy essay of 1982 on
the academic ethic, as well as others on the relations between higher education
and society. He covers much of the same ground as Kennedy but in a more erudite
style. These two know as much about the care and feeding of a university as
anyone. Anyone involved in one of these complex, intriguing and poorly
understood institutions鈥攆rom a new postdoc to an incoming vice
chancellor鈥攃ould profit from either.