Gordon gives keynote at conference in Dublin

History professor Daniel Gordon delivered one of two keynote addresses at a conference on “Changing Universities: Changing Sociologies” held June 27-30 in Dublin, Ireland, under the auspices of the International Sociological Association.

Gordon’s address, “New Disciplines, New Indulgences: The American University Since 1945,” focused on tensions between the university’s rising standards of disciplinary research on the one hand, and the need to serve a massively growing student body on the other. The lecture focused not only on different types of institutions in higher education but also on how different disciplines, since 1945, have split their functions between their research and service halves. Gordon argued that sociology was one of the disciplines that contributed the most to the creation of general education concepts because the discipline’s research profile also emphasized the need to produce large generalizations.

The second keynote was given by Andrew Abbott, professor of sociology at the University of Chicago and editor of the American Sociological Review. Gordon will publish his address in a book entitled “Knowledge For Whom?”, edited by Andreas Hesse, a sociologist at University College Dublin.

Conference program (starting at page 8)