Issues concerning the college as a community of inquiry, scholarship, and learning are considered, based on a 1982 conference at Colgate University. The conference addressed the problem of non-community in the academy, along with different conceptions of solving this problem. Conference participants described both typical experiences of academic malaise and their views of the structural deficiencies that contribute to the malaise. Participants noted that a sense of shared commitment among colleagues, which was once experienced, is now absent. The following perceptions were expressed: that students and teachers operated as independent agents, without a shared purpose or shared educational vocabulary; that there was no common language of discourse to mediate among private perceptions; and that expectations of administrators, teachers, and students differed. For students, the problem was seen to be curricular confusions. The conference also addressed the following: problems addressed by the general education movement, causes and effects of professionalization of the faculty, the option of pursuing classic liberalism, the option represented by core curriculum programs, and the ideology and history of liberal humanism. (SW)