Resize Text: 
During the last twenty years or so, the number of endowed centers at many universities has increased enormously—to as many as fifty or more at a single institution. There are centers for every region (or sub-region) of the world and every ethnic/religious group (or sub-group) known to history. There are centers for the study of illness and wellness, taxation, community research, ethics, aging, cultural understanding, arts policy, addiction, counterterrorism, environmental interpretation, ergonomics, value-based insurance design, entrepreneurship, and group dynamics—to choose only a few actual examples. Some are reflections of their donors' or operators' politics, whether liberal (Human Values) or conservative (Chastity and Abstinence). Some are formed in response to the politics of the campus; others are to the academy as vanity presses are to publishing.
Why so many? At some institutions—especially in good times—if a faculty member gets a prestigious offer, the counter-offer may be a center. At one institution where the number of centers exceeds 50, an administrator was asked how many the university was going to have. To her credit, she replied: “I promise you there won't be more than one per faculty member!”
Lawrence Rosen is the Cromwell Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University and an adjunct professor of law at Columbia Law School. Named to the first group of MacArthur Award fellows, he has been a Guggenheim fellow, a Phi Beta Kappa lecturer, and a visiting fellow at Oxford, Cambridge, The Institute for Advanced Study, The Woodrow Wilson Center for International Studies, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford.
Become a Subscriber