In 1925, A.J. Balfour, first Earl Balfour and author of the famous "Balfour Declaration", attended the inauguration of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His education and experience of foreign policy equipped him to take a prominent role. However, the conditions of strife-torn Palestine weighed heavily upon him, and raised wider interests of…

This article argues that new sites of knowledge production, increasingly cultivated by the mass media, are threatening the role of academics and universities as traditional sources of expertise. Drawing upon the conceptual categories of Pierre Bourdieu, the article suggests an alternative way of understanding this "crisis of legitimacy."

For academic administrators, the management of research remains a matter more of hope than expectation. It has proved particularly difficult to measure quality. Managers typically view research as an "asset". This essay argues that it is more useful to view research and its management as "process", and explores the implications of doing so for…

The universities of Oxford and Cambridge had developed different attitudes towards the award of honorary degrees through the early and middle decades of the twentieth century. Recently, both have adopted a similar cautious and apolitical stance. This essay describes the role of honorary degrees in the production and reproduction of their cultural…

National research policies are today driven by the concept of the "knowledge society", in which development is deemed to follow the application of new ideas. Australia, like other countries, has encouraged partnerships between the universities and industry. This essay examines how Australian scholars in the humanities have responded to the…

This essay considers recent implications of "new public management" (NPM) strategies for the universities of Germany. It argues that NPM poses a threat to the traditional values of the academic profession, and asks what the universities should do to restore public trust in their methods and management.