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"One must, as it were, he said, consider the University as a complex machine with two interlocking parts, a Generator that was devoted to producing excellence in relatively abstract areas of research, primarily scientific research, and then a Transformer which turned the prestige acquired through this excellence into a force of repression, directed at legitimizing the deepest possible cultural and political conservatism. The combination of excellence and a strictly-enforced, backward-looking cultural ethos made the University an almost irresistible magnet for the extensive funding from the alumni, large corporations, and the government that fuelled the Generator." --Raymond Geuss Richard Rorty at Princeton: Personal Recollections