The history of music didn’t seem so important on the morning of Sept. 12. Neither did the theory of computing that Thursday, or my senior thesis at any point that week. Without the comfortable assumption that we have four years to waste here, that the important events will all take place within our campus bubble, such work seemed perilously out of place, mere distractions from the crisis of the outside world.

In the aftermath of the attacks, such views were widely expressed. But they are old ones, not limited to one event or political quarter. The value of a liberal education, now cast into such uncertainty, has long been under question. Some have considered it a source of undeserved power, and refuse to accept the privileged view of the world it implies. Others, such as Jordana R. Lewis ’02 in her recent column on this page, describe it as unequal to the “brutal, real experience” to be found outside the gates—experience whose brutality the past few weeks have only served to confirm.

What can be said for the university in a dark and dangerous world? What does it have to offer to a society filled with suffering, of which Sept. 11 is only the most recent and painful example?

In part because of the nature of the classes, in part because of the name, it has become stylish for many at Harvard to say that the university has little to offer—little, that is, beyond the piece of paper on the wall that confers certain advantages when seeking future employment. The great question we face as students is not how we should conduct ourselves while here, but what to do once we have left—to go into I-banking or work for a non-profit, or maybe head to graduate school as a means of delaying the decision. The liberal education universities seek to provide is just an antiquated tradition, an activity (like croquet) once pursued by the leisured classes to occupy their time and no longer applicable to a changed, egalitarian world.

Sometimes these sentiments are employed, as in Lewis’ column, to discourage Harvard students from applying their learning to greater causes. Alternatively, they are also used to call on Harvard to devote itself to something other than learning. In a recent op-ed piece, Trevor S. Cox ’01-’02 asserted a link between “a Harvard education and the progress of social justice,” calling on Harvard to expand opportunities for “service learning”—presumably at the expense of the non-service learning that currently constitutes the bulk of the school’s activities.

If the university has nothing to offer the world, such calls to refocus its curriculum to society’s benefit are hard to resist. French literature and chiaroscuro have never kept the rain out, and you can’t eat the imaginary numbers. Although some developments in math and science may have occasionally brought material benefits, they are few among the fields where even remarkable progress would not bring technological advance—set theory, for example, or the study of dead languages. At best, such fields are a harmless pleasure for those engaged in them; at worst, a perverse misuse of scarce resources. What vital service do professors of folklore and mythology provide, and how many mouths could be fed with their budget?

To be honest, I don’t know how to answer these questions; I’m not sure how best to defend the time I spend learning about old music rather than comforting the afflicted. But there is something that makes me hesitant to close the universities and to send the students out into the fields.

For the university has a special means of working for good that other institutions lack. Often the choice between justice and learning, or between two different ways of helping others, is complicated and difficult. Not all ethical claims are obvious, nor do all social causes bear righteousness beyond question. There is a role for reason in arbitrating among them, and the ideal of liberal education (so painfully distorted at the hands of the Core Committee) is that through learning we can discover what the world is like and how one should live within it. The model of rigorous argument that mathematics provides, the skepticism and attention to empirical reasoning of the sciences, the rich and various examples of human action to be found in foreign places or past times, the emotional clarity and insight into our nature that we gain from literature, music and art—these aid us in understanding our condition and in discerning our purposes. The claim of liberal education—persuasive, though by no means proven—is that there is something vitally important to life that a book (yes, even a sourcebook) can provide.

The university is therefore anything but a social activist training camp, a place that will fill us with high and noble purposes and give us the tactics we need for assembling power. It is instead the first job of education to make us unsure of ourselves, to bring the questions into relief before the answers are apparent, in order to attain the clear vision that only comes after a long period of uncertainty and error. The university makes us test our received beliefs and give up our comfortable intuitions, so that when we do venture into the unsafe world beyond the gates, we can do so with the full confidence of our convictions. That is why the university has gates: not so much to keep out the riffraff, but to provide a sanctuary from the turbulence outside.

I have another full year in school—and a few more after graduation—and will be spending much of the next several months writing a thesis in medieval history. There’s a war on now, and I know that while I’m reading royal charters in the basement of Langdell, horrible things will be happening halfway around the world. I can’t be sure whether the path that I have chosen is the right one. But I am certain that the attempt to apply “an intangible version of justice to real, perilous threats,” which Lewis says “warrants mockery,” is indeed what we will all be called upon to do every instant that we live in the real world. Only now, during our brief sojourn in the academic quiet, is there time for us to develop our visions of justice and to be certain where they lead.

Stephen E. Sachs ’02 is a history concentrator in Quincy House. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.