© John Everett Millais, 1881/WikipediaTheologian John Henry Newman, was an English theologian, academic, intellectual, philosopher, polymath, historian, writer, scholar and poet, first as an Anglican priest and later as a Catholic priest and cardinal.
Consider corporations like the BBC, the NHS, Google, Amazon, Biontech. No one worries about them. It would not be the end of the world if they were to wither away. But there are several corporate institutions which we do worry about. The state is one. The church is another. Perhaps the third great one is the university.
Even though schools are ancient, and universities are medieval, we only began worrying about the university in the 19th Century. This is when the church began to wane and the state began to wax in the eye of the university. The most famous writer in England about the university was Cardinal Newman. He gave a series of lectures in the 19th Century published under the title of
The Idea of a University. Newman was a worrier. He worried about the state. Then he worried about the church. Finally he worried about the university.
Newman's argument, in short, was that the university had become a superimposition of several ideas: one was religious, one was what he called liberal and one was utilitarian. A few years ago I wrote an academic article explaining that the university is a composite entity: a superimposition of an 'eternal' institution, an 'immortal' institution and an 'immediate' institution. Fancy words: but I wanted to make Newman's conceptions clearer than I think they have been to even those people influenced by his 'idea' - all those Leavises and Scrutons. The university is built on three contradictory ideas:
Comment: More conservative estimates of at least 200,000 dead have been made by Western commentators, such as Colonel Douglas Macgregor, but, whatever the precise figure is, it's most telling that a casualty rate approaching this magnitude is frequently left out (if not almost completely absent) in Western media reports.
When it is acknowledged by Western media, the number of data is often muddled together, and/or credence is given to US estimates which significantly over inflate Russia's losses and massively underestimate Ukrainian casualties - although, notably, we still come close to the above note number of dead, it's just distributed wrongly - as can be seen in Reuters April 2023 headline and report: The conflict is also providing ideal cover for the most sinister industries: Illegal organ market is a lucrative business in war-torn Ukraine