daoist scholarUniversities all ultimately rely on the activities taking place among the invisible republic of scholars. The people who do the actual intellectual work — the hard-working researchers, the mad-cap thinkers, the people who approach all problems from a different angle. The actual institutional structure of the university is often in acute tension with the invisible republic. Its members are difficult to control, to confine, and often they don’t behave with the required decorum. Proper members of the invisible republic of scholars never take themselves very seriously. University administrators always do.

The problem with Chinese universities is that the form all too often is mistaken for the content. There is no acknowledgment of the invisible republic. What at first looks like intellectual pursuits turn out to be ridiculous attempts to maintain face. It looks like a conference, a seminar or a lecture but it is nothing of the sort. I wonder what the old-time scholars would make of it all, people like the Daoists? They drank more rice wine but they also did more actual intellectual work.

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