Freedom, Coercion, and Authority

In The Archive we republish articles that, in hindsight, may have been ahead of their time in its prescience. Our pull for this issue is a 1999 piece by Robert N. Bellah, (February 23, 1927—July 30, 2013), former Elliott Professor of Sociology at the University of California in Berkeley, titled, “Freedom, Coercion and Authority.” In this article Bellah forwards the benefits of the self-understanding of society and defends the traditional purpose of a university education. Bellah believes that college students do not go to college to merely learn facts, but to learn how to think critically and apply these facts. Many issues facing Bellah addresses facing universities at the time of this writing are even more pressing issues today. This piece was originally published in Academe, the Bulletin of the American association of University Professors 85.1 (January/February 1999), 16–21 and the Council of Societies for the Study of Religion Bulletin 28.2 (April 1999), 35–39.