The horseman with the power to kill with the sword represents war. Pelikan says that war hits every society's institutions hard, but the universities' experiences with war have been especially tragic. He cites the burning of the centuries-old library at the University of Louvain in Belgium during World War I by the Germans, and then the reprise of bombardment of Louvain in 1940, when the library was destroyed again.
The horseman who kills with famine represents starvations in some parts of the world. This horseman is under attack by the green revolution, Pelikan says, which is fueled by a interaction between university research and the research of private, governmental, and international agencies, which he finds fascinating. He emphasizes the university as the fulcrum of all research where basic research and applied research can interact.Pestilence, the third horseman, has received the most attention, of the four, from the university. Pelikan says institutions charged with preparing future physicians, including universities, are moving towards research committed more to the cause of disease than to the remedy of disease once it breaks out. He points out that those who do not benefit from medical discoveries have the least opportunity to access the university, and therefore the university is portrayed as a bastion of the ruling class. To counterpoint Pelikan says that it can be argued that if the university sacrificed quality for equality, it could jeopardize those it was trying to help.
The fourth horseman's wild beasts of the earth represent the forces of nature. Pelikan says that the university has previously produced people of superior intellectual capacity and technological skill who have subdued nature. Now it falls to the university to produce those who can take responsibility to ensure the future of earth - and the university which resides on it.According to Pelikan the university today faces four main crises. The first is to continue advancing, transmitting, preserving, and diffusing knowledge to counteract war. The second is finding ways to produce and distribute adequate food supplies to the burgeoning population. Next is to discover medical treatments and preventive medicines for those who need them, and to make them more available. The final crisis is ensuring the future of the earth and the university while combating the other three crises.
Pelikan's fifth horseman is ignorance. He says that knowledge and virtue are different and the university can defeat ignorance with knowledge, but that won't be enough to deal with the spiritual and moral aspects of the future. The university will have to combat ignorance through virtue as well as knowledge, and that virtue can be obtained by fulfilling duties its to society. His point is that no university can be totally self-contained and expect to overcome the crisis of confidence and credibility.
