New Orleans: An Intellectual City
by Kevin Wm. Wildes, S.J.
When people think of New Orleans, they often call to mind the sights and sounds of Bourbon Street, Mardi Gras, world class restaurants, jazz, the port and shipping, or the energy industry. Aside from pictures of college students who come to visit and party, people don't think of New Orleans as a college town. But it is. New Orleans is home to fourteen colleges and universities and thousands of students. These institutions represent the full spectrum of higher education in the United States. There are national research universities like Tulane, public universities like the University of New Orleans and Southern University, small undergraduate colleges like Our Lady of Holy Cross, historically African-American universities like Dillard and Xavier, Jesuit universities like Loyola along with well known health care research institutions like LSU, Tulane, and Ochsner. In New Orleans one finds the spectrum of American higher education.
These universities have always played an important role in this city. They have educated people and helped form the leadership of society in New Orleans. A great city has at least three key elements to it: it is like a stool with three legs. One leg is the business community which generates the basic economic foundations of the city. A second leg is the political community which provides the basis to organize life in a city. And finally, there is the civic, nonprofit community which develops and maintains the social capital of a city. The civic community comprises schools, churches, and a variety of volunteer association. Colleges and universities are certainly part of the third leg of the stool. But they also play an important role in developing the leadership for the other two aspects of the city. Colleges and universities have been important in educating the leadership in every aspect of life in New Orleans. Universities and colleges are formative of the leadership in the political, business, and civic communities that make a city. The institutions of higher education help to form and support the three legs of the stool that make up any great city.
But colleges and universities have an even more interesting role in the city of New Orleans. They help to shape and sustain the city's culture of diversity. When people speak of the role New Orleans has played in shaping the culture of the United States they often refer to music or literature. But New Orleans has played an even more important role in shaping the United States as a diverse nation. When Louisiana was purchased by the United States, America not only bought the Louisiana territory. It also bought diversity. From the very beginning New Orleans was a city of diversity: French, Spanish, Creole, slaves, and free African Americans. No other city like it existed in the United States.
Colleges and universities did not bring diversity to New Orleans, but they have played an important role in promoting an understanding of diversity. By their nature universities are places that promote civic virtues. They are places where people hold different ideas, question one another, argue, and disagree. Peacefully. By their nature universities are contentious places that promote toleration. Like the rest of the United States, New Orleans has struggled with the tensions of diversity. The colleges and universities of New Orleans have been places that helped the city face the challenges of being a city of diverse cultures.
In its life post-Katrina, the city's universities will have a renewed role in its new life. The city found its economic strength for so long in agriculture, shipping, energy, and tourism. Those areas will continue to be important to the life of the city. But the world has changed and as we move further into an economy based on ideas and intellectual capital colleges and universities can play a central role in developing the intellectual capital that will drive the future of the city. And, these same institutions can help preserve the diverse social capital that makes New Orleans New Orleans. The social capital of diversity is crucial to compete in a globalized economy. Colleges and universities also have been ladders of economic and social opportunity. They are also engines of innovation and ideas. They create intellectual capital. And they are the repositories of history, culture, and values, the social capital that any society requires.
New Orleans, rich in culture, diversity, history, and universities is well equipped to meet the social and intellectual challenges of a globalized world.
