Universities are a part of society but insist on distance, detachment and autonomy. Universities are bankrolled by society but academics demand total freedom in the domains of study, research, and expression of opinion and criticism of whatever goes on in the funding society. These and other questions, issues, contradictions and dilemmas, which preoccupied Prof. Jacob Talmon (1916–80) for throughout his life, were most succinctly dealt with in a series of two articles entitled ‘The idea of the university’ for the Israeli Ha'aretz newspaper (28 September and 5 October 1966). Throughout his long ... More

Universities are a part of society but insist on distance, detachment and autonomy. Universities are bankrolled by society but academics demand total freedom in the domains of study, research, and expression of opinion and criticism of whatever goes on in the funding society. These and other questions, issues, contradictions and dilemmas, which preoccupied Prof. Jacob Talmon (1916–80) for throughout his life, were most succinctly dealt with in a series of two articles entitled ‘The idea of the university’ for the Israeli Ha'aretz newspaper (28 September and 5 October 1966). Throughout his long academic career, Talmon offered his original, often brilliant answers to these numerous questions in his books and articles. The university ideal, Judaism, intellectuals, politics, the Arab - Israeli conflict, the dynamics at work in these domains and the responses Talmon put forward in his various writings constitute the focus of this book. Talmon expressed notions and ideas which were wise, intelligent, and not least, controversial. Though his academic output began to be published as early as the 1940s, its relevance to the present is proving visionary. His work deserves to be recalled and studied. Using previously disregarded and un-translated Hebrew sources, this work attempts with caution and due modesty to follow the observation of Keith Thomas, the renowned Oxford historian, who noted that ‘much activity in the humanities is concerned to rediscover and re-interpret what once was known but has subsequently been forgotten. A better word for this is “scholarship”, with its emphasis less on new knowledge than on fresh understanding.‘