Higher education institutions in South Africa continue variously to experience a range of contestations that are analogous much of the time to "war by other means". However, if we stand back from our divided social lives and the mandate that history visits on our institutions, not to absolve anyone but to yield to what the imperatives are that are integral to our higher education institutions, as case in point, we may be surprised by their deep-seated sociological logic. This is the rather abstract position taken in this article in league with Anthony Giddens to probe the articulation of the institutional imperatives of trust and intimacy, in the context of the university, and how one might be able to disclose its dynamics.