Part one of a three-part series on universities, science, and the promotion of health as our social purpose.
Summer break offers a bit of an opportunity reflection about what one does, why one does it, and how to do it better. Over the past few weeks, I have found myself thinking about something at the heart of all we do in health—the process of knowledge generation. What we do is upstream of what, and how, we think. As we look ahead to the end of summer and a reengagement with a livelier pace of work, I would like to use this space for a three-part series of reflections on the thinking that drives all we do, the institutions that shape this thinking, and the social purposes that our knowledge helps to define and advance.
I will start with a reflection on the institutions where I have worked for the past 25 years—universities. For thousands of years, universities have served as centers of thought around the world. Clark Kerr memorably noted that roughly eighty-five institutions in the Western world have existed in recognizable form since 1520. They include the Catholic Church, a few parliaments, some Swiss cantons, and some seventy universities. Some universities go even further back. The University of Bologna, for example, was founded in 1088 and is now the oldest university in continuous operation in the world.
Institutions do not survive five centuries and beyond by accident; they survive because they do something civilizations cannot do without. Through social and technological change, universities have remained hubs for the creation and dissemination of knowledge, for the intellectual formation of the next generation. There are many reasons for this—perhaps the key reason is that universities have always been physical spaces where smart, committed people have come together to discuss ideas, work out problems, and cultivate a life of the mind. This will remain true even in the AI era, with its potential to change so much about how we create and engage with knowledge. No matter what AI can do, it cannot be a physical campus where students and teachers come together for the shared pursuit of knowledge. This simple, powerful feature of universities have kept these institutions robust through the ages and will likely continue to do so.
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