Once again CAUT president Loretta Czernis has come through with an insightful piece ("Inspire Students with Straight Talk," Bulletin, Sept. 2005), typical of her columns. However, it is difficult at public institutions to keep up the high level of intellectual commitment she so eloquently espouses. When my university (Regina) was getting going in the 1960s, our mission statement was headed by a quotation attributed to Socrates, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” The mission statement that followed put flesh on those bare bones. Today, both are gone. Probably too much for the Philistines to accommodate. Pity! But on a more cheerful note, the more academics buy into the frame of mind that Czernis puts forward, the more the university will fulfill its mission, and, in time, hopefully, turn from the fate so brilliantly warned against in John Ralston Saul’s 1995 Massey Lectures The Unconscious Civilization. Let’s hope for the best.

Jack Boan
Professor Emeritus, Economics, University of Regina