Institutional Autonomy Quotes

A Senate chosen for six years will, in most instances, be an appointment for life, as the influence of such a body over the minds of the people will be coequal to the extensive powers with which they are vested, and they will not only forget, but be forgotten by their constituents.

I refuse to surrender that reasonable liberty of utterance … in the absence of which the most ample endowment for an educational institution would have but little worth.

U.K. Athletics needs to develop a financial independence so it no longer has to be subject to the whim of politicians. If you are reliant on government, there is a big problem.

The police force cannot be completely independent of the executive government.

Universities are less constrained by authority and rigid doctrine in the United States than in most other societies, to my knowledge.

I believe that political power exercises itself through the mediation of a certain number of institutions which look as if they have nothing in common with the political power, and as if they are independent of it, while they are not.

The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.

A true university can never rest upon the will of one man. A true university always rests upon the wills of many divergent-minded old men, who refuse to be disturbed, but who growl in their kennels.

The Left regards the Constitution as defective and outmoded - in part because it impedes the government's ability to control institutions, like churches and families, which stand between the state and individuals.

By no means do I anticipate screening those who come on to campus... And I have no difficulty if a bishop across the country or some local pastor may say that's not Catholic teaching - that's fine.

Personalist regimes mute factional differences the most .... Dictators usually retain the loyalty of elites through some combination of coercion, personal favors, and material rewards. Elites are frequently rotated or jailed to avoid factionalism. The military is usually a depersonalized instrument for the dictator's power, holding no sense of independent institutional identity. Divisions between so-called hard-liners and soft-liners are virtually non-existent...

The principle of academic freedom is designed to make sure that powers outside the university, including government and corporations, are not able to control the curriculum or intervene in extra-mural speech.

The legislative body possesses with us a great advantage over that of those countries where it may be adjourned or dissolved at the pleasure of the executive authority. It is self-moving and self-dependent. Although it may be convened by the executive, it cannot be adjourned or dissolved by it.

Violence or the threat of violence [must] never be permitted to influence the actions or judgments of the university community. Once it does, the community, almost by definition, ceases to be a university. It is for this reason that from time immemorial expulsion has been the primary instrument of university discipline.

Bureaucracies are designed to perform public business. But as soon as a bureaucracy is established, it develops an autonomous spiritual life and comes to regard the public as its enemy.

No state legislature ever built a great university.

Surely this is a bad beginning in Lane Seminary. If it is to be governed by the excitements of Cincinnati, and especially … excitements so unreasonable, and if the students are to be placed under laws [so as] to appease the mob, the church will have little hope either from its purity or its influence. [When] it is found that it can be governed by city excitements it may expect to be favored with enough of them. Better far for the Seminary and the honest religion, the mob had torn the building to the ground. It could have been reared again as a standing monument of integrity.

According to me when former governors join the political mainstream, the whole cause propagated for autonomy of the institutions, itself gets impacted. When they dwell into statements which are politically loaded, rather than during their tenure as a governor, it is far easier to analyse those statements.

Government and business should remain distinct and separate, one directed from Washington, the other from New York.

With the corporatization and privatization of higher education, it is increasingly more difficult for colleges and universities to expand and deepen democratic public life, produce engaged critical citizens, and operate as democratic public spheres.

England has always felt under a certain degree of obligation to bestow on such of her outlying populations as were of her own blood and language, and on some who were not, representative institutions formed in imitation of her own: but until the present generation, she has been on the same bad level with other countries as to the amount of self-government which she allowed them to exercise through the representative institutions that she conceded to them.

The Executive is as independent of either House of Congress as either House of Congress is independent of him, and they cannot call for the records of his actions, or the action of his officers against his consent, any more than he can call for any of the journals or records of the House or Senate.

It would be foolish and wrong to ignore the fact that all our universities today tread a very dangerous path. Increasingly, they are accepting government money because they are doing things that government wants done. How great a peril is this in a democracy?

The CVC and CAG are independent but merely recommendatory. The government often ignores their advice.

Two successive commissioners in London police were fired by the mayor that came into office. That doesn't mean the police in London is not independent and does not exercise powers. Ultimately it is the political executive that has to answer.