Abstract

Since 1999 the Center for the Study of Science and Religion has been, within the Earth Institute at Columbia University, a small novelty in the larger structures of this place, but one that has proven remarkably effective at nurturing new ideas that otherwise would not easily have found a place to be thought through, in the various communities that make up our departments, schools, institutes, and campuses. One of the most radical of these new ideas is the notion that love might have a specific, significant, even central role in the operations and purposes of the university; and that in particular, love might be necessary precisely for the protection of new ideas, if that is indeed the university's core mission.