10.02-01 .On the web since.1997. CRES .sidebar. Vern Barneern Barnett Vernon BarnettTFNBIOSPIRITWESTPORT39NOTES
   
Crescat scientia, vita excolatur. 


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or read statements about the University of Chicago below
C r e s c a t   s c i e n t i a ,  v i t a  e x c o l a t u r .
Let knowledge grow from more to more; and so be human life enriched.
Vern is a grateful alumnus of the University of Chicago and its Divinity School
and credits it for supporting interdisciplinary approaches to learning
and the unfettered and respectful exchange of ideas.

When he was President of the University of Chicago, Edward Levi was repeatedly congratulated on the University’s sponsorship of the nuclear testing initiative that supported the Manhattan Project.  Levi’s response: “Thank you, but any University presented the opportunity would have done that.  I’m proud of the fact that our Press has committed to the Hittite dictionary.”
--RICHARD A. ROSENGARTEN Jan. 27, 2022
#CHICAGO_PRINCIPLES
CHICAGO PRINCIPLES

“There is not an institution of learning in the country in which freedom of teaching is more absolutely untrammeled than in the University of Chicago.”
 --William Rainey Harper,
First President of the University of Chicago


“We do not support so-called trigger warnings, we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual safe spaces where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.” 
--Robert J. Zimmer,
13th president of the University of Chicago


“Concerns about civility and mutual respect can never be used as a justification for closing off discussion of ideas, however offensive or disagreeable those ideas may be to some members of our community."  


Main page and video:

1967 Kalven Report

the '69 protest

40 years later

2024
'The University of Chicago has long adhered to the Kalven principles, a statement of university neutrality articulated in 1967 by a committee led by one of the most respected legal scholars of the last century, Harry Kalven Jr. At their heart, the Kalven principles articulate the view that “the instrument of dissent and criticism is the individual faculty member or the individual student. The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic. It is, to go back once again to the classic phrase, a community of scholars.”'
--David French, New York Times, Apr 28, 2024


"To listen and understand; to question and disagree; to treat no proposition as sacred and no objection as impious; to be willing to entertain unpopular ideas and cultivate the habits of an open mind — this is what I was encouraged to do by my teachers at the University of Chicago.

"It’s what used to be called a liberal education.

"The University of Chicago showed us something else: that every great idea is really just a spectacular disagreement with some other great idea.

"Socrates quarrels with Homer. Aristotle quarrels with Plato. Locke quarrels with Hobbes and Rousseau quarrels with them both. Nietzsche quarrels with everyone. Wittgenstein quarrels with himself.

"These quarrels are never personal. Nor are they particularly political, at least in the ordinary sense of politics. Sometimes they take place over the distance of decades, even centuries.

"Most importantly, they are never based on a misunderstanding. On the contrary, the disagreements arise from perfect comprehension; from having chewed over the ideas of your intellectual opponent so thoroughly that you can properly spit them out.

"In other words, to disagree well you must first understand well. You have to read deeply, listen carefully, watch closely. You need to grant your adversary moral respect; give him the intellectual benefit of doubt; have sympathy for his motives and participate empathically with his line of reasoning. And you need to allow for the possibility that you might yet be persuaded of what he has to say."

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" . . . about my college, the University of Chicago.  They say that Chicago is a Baptist school where atheist professors teach Jewish students St. Thomas Aquinas. That’s your Interfaith America right there."
-- David Brooks


I went to college at a time and in a place where many people believed that the great books, poems, paintings and pieces of music really did hold the keys to the kingdom. If you studied them carefully and thought about them deeply, they would improve your taste, your judgments, your conduct.

Our professors at the University of Chicago had sharpened their minds and renovated their hearts by learning from and arguing against books. They burned with intensity as they tried to convey what past authors and artists were trying to say.

The teachers welcomed us into a great conversation, traditions of dispute stretching back to Aeschylus, Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Clifford Odets. They held up visions of excellence, people who had seen farther and deeper, such as Augustine, Sylvia Plath and Richard Wright. They introduced us to the range of moral ecologies that have been built over the centuries and come down as sets of values by which we can choose to live — stoicism, Buddhism, romanticism, rationalism, Marxism, liberalism, feminism.

The message was that all of us could improve our taste and judgment by becoming familiar with what was best — the greatest art, philosophy, literature and history. And this journey toward wisdom was a lifelong affair.

The hard sciences help us understand the natural world. The social sciences help us measure behavior patterns across populations. But culture and the liberal arts help us enter the subjective experience of particular people: how this unique individual felt; how this other one longed and suffered. We have the chance to move with them, experience the world, a bit, the way they experience it.
      
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UChicago is widely regarded as the most diffcult 
and demanding of American private universities.
 

The University of Chicago's unofficial motto is "the place where fun comes to die."

Or to put it more simply: "That's all well and good in practice . . . but how does it work in theory?"

The ["Reg" Library] holds ~4.5 million volumes, including everything from 5th Century manuscripts to that obscure academic book that was cited in a paper that was cited in a book that was cited in a paper that was cited in a book that your thesis advisor suggested you read this one chapter from. 

What is graffiti at a UChicago restroom stall like? Here's a sample: "The statement on the other side of this stall is false." To which another scribe added: "The statement on the other side of this stall is 'The statement on the other side of this stall is false' is actually true."

Q. How common is sex among UChicago students?
A. If you stroke us, do we not roll our eyes back in pleasure?

Q. Where in the library is the safest place to have sex, least likely to be discovered?
A. In the Sports Illustrated section.

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Statistics and Economics buttons include "Standard deviant," "Enjoys random walks," "What's your production function?" and "I have rational expectations."

--

‘If you’ve never met a student from the University of Chicago, I’ll describe him to you.
     If you give him a glass of water, he says: ‘This is a glass of water. But is it a glass of water? And if it is a glass of water, why is it a glass of water?’ . . .
     And eventually he dies of thirst.”

--Shelley Berman

UChgo humor

37 Things Only UChicago Students Understand