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In this reprinting of Truth on Trial, Robert Carlson outlines the sad state of higher education in America, where “learning” is increasingly disconnected from the pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty that has always been its most important heritage, replaced by an environment where any view that is not ‘politically correct’ is persecuted and disdained. Drawing upon his own experiences in the transformational Integrated Humanities Program (IHP) at the University of Kansas (KU), Carlson details the crisis that faces education today, and uses the lessons learned through that program’s meteoric rise (and eventual demise) to propose a solution to that same crisis. Launching in the early 1970’s, the IHP was the “Great Books” brainchild of a trio of KU professors—Dennis Quinn, Franklyn Nelick, and John Senior—who understood that wonder is not only the beginning but also the sustaining principle of the best education, and who sought to offset the radical disintegration permeating Western culture in general and higher education in particular. Convinced that the fragmentation of such major cultural institutions as the family, the church, and the world of education was profoundly affecting students, these three teachers invited freshmen and sophomores at the public university to join their fledgling program, where they would study, hear, and discuss the classics of ancient and medieval literature, listen to their professors converse on “the greatest that has been thought and said,” memorize poems, stargaze, take courses in Latin and rhetoric, and much more. The program’s growth was immediate and rapid—student enrollment increased from 20 in 1970 to 140 in 1971, and 186 in 1972—but its counter-cultural stance put it on fragile ground at KU, and within a year, it was under intense scrutiny, culminating in a public, quasi-judicial proceeding in which a dean-appointed committee sought to determine whether the IHP should continue to exist. Quinn, Nelick, and Senior, professors with a combined total of 90+ years in teaching, were now on trial at the university, not because they had taught poorly, but because they had taught too well. On January 20, 1979, the Advisory Committee charged with investigating the Program rendered its verdict, placing it under the administration of a new Humanities Committee, effectively annihilating the IHP. While its initial trial felt like a defeat, God had other plans in store. Thankfully (and to paraphrase Twain’s famous words), the effects of the IHP’s death were greatly exaggerated. In the years since its untimely demise on the KU campus, its impact on the world of Catholic education has only grown stronger—the fruitfulness of its alumni and friends serving as the ultimate proof of its vision’s great worth. Since the program’s closing in 1979, it has inspired the founding of both Clear Creek Abbey and Wyoming Catholic College, as well as St. Gregory’s Academy in Pennsylvania (which eventually led to Gregory the Great Academy), and St. Martin’s Academy in Kansas. Perhaps most tellingly of all, its clear call to make wonder, beauty, and experience vital parts of any educational program has impacted countless homeschooling families, private and public school teachers, and educational programs in the subsequent years.

A pioneering educator's firsthand account of building opportunity and hope in Alabama's Black Belt.

Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt is one of the most important firsthand accounts of African American educational leadership and community development in the post-Reconstruction South. Originally published in 1918, this memoir by educator and institution-builder William J. Edwards documents his extraordinary efforts to create educational opportunities for Black citizens in Alabama's Black Belt during a period marked by segregation, economic hardship, and limited access to public resources.

Born in Snow Hill, Alabama, in 1869, Edwards rose from humble beginnings to attend the Tuskegee Institute under the leadership of Booker T. Washington. Inspired by Tuskegee's philosophy of education, self-reliance, and community advancement, he returned to rural Alabama determined to establish an institution that could provide both academic and practical instruction to African American students. His efforts led to the founding of the Snow Hill Institute in 1893, a school that became a vital center of learning and leadership for generations of Black Alabamians.

The memoir also offers valuable insight into the educational philosophies that shaped African American advancement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Edwards reflects on the influence of Booker T. Washington, the role of industrial and vocational education, fundraising efforts in the North, the Jeanes Fund, public-school reform, and the broader movement for racial uplift through education. His account illuminates the networks of educators, supporters, and community leaders who worked to expand opportunities for African Americans throughout the South.

At once inspirational and historically significant, Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt remains an essential source for understanding African American education, Southern race relations, and the determination of Black communities to create institutions that fostered dignity, opportunity, and progress. It stands as both a personal testament and a crucial historical document chronicling a transformative era in American history.

Two-Year College Writing Studies is a comprehensive overview of the two-year college writing teaching experience within our current political and historical contexts, with examples for teachers to better enact just teaching practices in their colleges. Editors Darin Jensen and Brett Griffiths present grounded, well-theorized, and practical strategies for teachers to implement in classrooms, institutions, and geopolitical contexts to advocate more effectively for their students.
 
Contributors draw on theories of identity, rhetorical third space, and linguistics to articulate a praxis of just teaching. They describe existing institutional challenges and opportunities that foster equity and offer cautionary tales of educational systems dismantled for short-term economic and political gains. Two-year college writing studies—when properly resourced—holds the potential to foster (or undermine) democratic ideals of civic literacy and uplift. Chapters in this volume offer case study examples of changes in departmental practices for reflection, interaction, and assessment that empower faculty to break free and engage directly with institutional, regional, state, and national constraints.
 
By making these resilient practices visible, Two-Year College Writing Studies amplifies the voices and validates the experiences of instructors engaging in this work. It will serve generalists, specialists, and academics interested in the subdiscipline of student success pedagogies and the political histories of two-year colleges and be useful for instructors new to the field, as professional development for veteran instructors, and as an introduction for graduate students entering two-year college writing studies programs.