Faculty Responsibility in Contemporary Society

The faculty is the crucial variable in the maintenance of the contemporary university. The public university’s essential missions, teaching, research, and service to a broader community are carried out by its faculty. Moreover, faculty members constitute an intellectual core in their communities. Often they are the primary supply and the effective demand for art and culture in their towns. Nationally they are among the leaders of the professions. Represented in faculty ranks are many leading scientists, humanists, and artists. As consultants, researchers, and strategists, they have enormous impact on the culture, economy, and government of both America and Italy. Faculty represent a neutral competence for criticism of society and its institutions as well as spirited proactivism. They are the intellectual fire starters and the cataloguers and organizers of a rapidly expanding knowledge base. In those cultures that have not developed an intellectual class (America included), university faculty come closest to filling that role.