ussions which give rise to public opinion. At
least they are supposed to do so. In a democracy everyone belongs, or is
supposed to belong, to one great public. In an autocracy there are
perhaps many little publics.

What role do the schools and colleges play in the formation of public
opinion? The schools transmit the tradition. They standardize our
national prejudices and transmit them. They do this necessarily.

A liberal or college education tends to modify and qualify all our
inherited political, religious, and social prejudices. It does so by
bringing into the field of discussion matters that would not otherwise
get into the public consciousness. In this way a college education puts
us in a way to control our prejudices instead of being controlled by
them. This is the purpose of a liberal education.

The emancipation which history, literature, and a wider experience with
life give us permits us to enter sympathetically into the lives and
interests of others; it widens that area over which public opinion
rather than force exercises control.

It makes it possible to extend the area of political control. It means
the extension of democratic participation in the common life. The
universities, by their special studies in the field of social science,
are seeking to accumulate and bring into the view of public opinion a
larger body of attested fact upon which the public may base its opinion.

It is probably not the business of the universities to agitate reforms
nor to attempt directly to influence public opinion in regard to current
issues. To do this is to relax its critical attitude, lessen its
authority in matters of fact, and jeopardize its hard-won academic
freedom. When a university takes over the function of a political party
or a church it ceases to perform its function as a university.

6. News and Social Control[271]

Everywhere today men are conscious that somehow they must deal with
questions more intricate than any that church or school had prepared
them to understand. Increasingly they know that they cannot understand
them if the facts are not quickly and steadily available. Increasingly
they are baffled because the facts are not available; and they are
wondering whether government by consent can survive in a time when the
manufacture of consent is an unregulated private enterprise. For in an
exact sense the present crisis of western democracy is a crisis in
journalism.

I do not agree with those