
Alan Brinkley, Betty Dessants, Michael Flamm, Cynthia Fleming, Charles Forcey, and Eric Rothschild
University of Chicago Press, 1999
Edited by Albert N. Link, Donald S. Siegel, and Mike Wright
University of Chicago Press, 2015
Edited by Sonya Atalay and Alexandra McCleary
University of Arizona Press, 2022
Edited by Edmund L. Pincoffs
University of Texas Press, 1975
Most professors and administrators are aware that academic freedom is in danger of being brushed aside by a public that has little understanding of what is at stake. They may be only marginally aware that the defense of academic freedom is endangered by certain confusions concerning the nature of academic freedom, the criteria for its violation, and the structure of an adequate justification for claims to it. These confusions were enshrined in some of the central documents on the subject, including the 1940 Statement on Academic Freedom and Tenure, agreed upon by the American Association of University Professors and the Association of American Colleges and endorsed by many professional organizations. Careful analysis of them will not do away with debate; it will bring the debate into focus, so that attacks on academic freedom can be appraised as near or far away from the center of the target and can then be appropriately answered.
Nearly all the contemporary writing on academic freedom consists of attack or defense. The Concept of Academic Freedom is the first book to deal exclusively with fundamental conceptual issues underlying the battle. In the discussion of these issues, certain philosophical positions crystallize: radical versus liberal conceptions of the status and function of university teachers, specific versus general theories of academic freedom, consequential versus nonconsequential theories of justification. Partisans (and enemies) of academic freedom would do well to decide on which side of these divisions they stand, or how they would mediate between sides. Otherwise many questions will remain unclear: What is under discussion—a special right peculiar to academics or a general right that is especially important to academics? Is justification of that right possible? Can the right be derived from other rights, or from the theory of justice or of democratic society? Or is the argument for academic freedom one that more properly turns on the consequences for society as a whole if that freedom is not protected?
The essays in this book explore these and other problems concerning the defense of academic freedom by radicals, the justification for disruption on campus, and the control of research.
Contributors to the volume include Hugo Adam Bedau, Bertram H. Davis, Milton Fisk, Graham Hughes, Alan Pasch, Hardy E. Jones, Alexander Ritchie, Amelie Oksenberg Rorty, Rolf Sartorius, T. M. Scanlon, Richard Schmitt, John R. Searle, Judith Jarvis Thomson, and William Van Alstyne. All are outstanding in their fields. Many have had practical experience in the legal profession or with the American Association of University Professors on the issue of academic freedom.
By Harry Huntt Ransom
University of Texas Press, 1982
In 1982, a century after the laying of the cornerstone of its first building, the University of Texas was ranked by the New York Times among the best in the nation. No one had more to do with that extraordinary achievement than Harry Huntt Ransom. From 1935 to his death in 1976, he served the University in positions ranging from instructor in English to chancellor of The University of Texas System. In the fifties, sixties, and seventies, he held a succession of administrative posts requiring him to face a myriad of perplexing problems. Among the critical issues calling for analysis and decision in those years were the post-Sputnik pressure for greater emphasis on science and technology, the student revolts during the 1960s, and the defection of growing numbers of university faculty to industry and government.
Harry Huntt Ransom did not merely respond to the problems of the times. He had his own large ambitions for the University of Texas, in particular the improvement of student programs, the development of a vigorous faculty, and—the achievement for which he is best remembered—the building of a world-renowned library.
He was concerned with the role of the university in society, what the university should do and do well, and what it should not do. Always he viewed these matters in broad perspective, and his approach to them was far-sighted and deeply philosophical.
As dean, vice-president, president, and chancellor, Ransom wrote and spoke often on these and other important subjects. Aside from the books that he wrote and edited, he left a prodigious amount of material, some of which had been published in various journals and some of which had been delivered as lectures and addresses and never made available in printed form.
For the last twenty-five years of Ransom's life his wife, Hazel, was his closest companion and confidant. At the urging of Harry's friends, colleagues, and admirers, she undertook the task of sifting through her late husband's papers in an effort to organize and preserve some of the important contributions he had made to the thought and planning that were so instrumental in shaping the University of Texas and higher education in general. In these essays we see the force of reasoning and grace of style for which Ransom was so widely admired. It was he who reminded us that books last longer than buildings. This is a book of lasting importance that Harry Ransom himself might have given us had he lived longer.
Blake R. Silver
University of Chicago Press, 2020
Blake R. Silver
University of Chicago Press, 2020
Matthew A. Waller
University of Arkansas Press, 2021
Natasha Warikoo
University of Chicago Press, 2016
Denda, Kayo
Rutgers University Press, 2018
Thomas Bender, Philip M. Katz, Colin Palmer, and the Committee on Graduate Education (AHA)
University of Illinois Press, 2004
An examination and analysis of history education in American colleges and universities
In 1958, the American Historical Association began a study to determine the status and condition of history education in U.S. colleges and universities. Published in 1962 and addressing such issues as the supply and demand for teachers, student recruitment, and training for advanced degrees, that report set a lasting benchmark against which to judge the study of history thereafter. Now, more than forty years later, the AHA has commissioned a new report. The Education of Historians for the Twenty-first Century documents this important new study's remarkable conclusions.
Both the American academy and the study of history have been dramatically transformed since the original study, but doctoral programs in history have barely changed. This report from the AHA explains why and offers concrete, practical recommendations for improving the state of graduate education. The Education of Historians for the
Twenty-first Century stands as the first investigation of graduate training for historians in more than four decades and the best available study of doctoral education in any major academic discipline.
Prepared for the AHA by the Committee on Graduate Education, the report represents the combined efforts of a cross-section of the entire historical profession. It draws upon a detailed review of the existing studies and data on graduate education and builds upon this foundation with an exhaustive survey of history doctoral programs. This included actual visits to history departments across the country and consultations with scores of individual historians, graduate students, deans, academic and non-academic employers of historians, as well as other stakeholders in graduate education.
As the ethnic and gender composition of both graduate students and faculty has changed, methodologies have been refined and the domains of historical inquiry expanded. By addressing these revolutionary intellectual and demographic changes in the historical profession, The Education of Historians for the Twenty-first Century breaks important new ground. Combining a detailed historical snapshot of the profession with a rigorous analysis of these intellectual changes, this volume is ideally positioned as the definitive guide to strategic planning for history departments. It includes practical recommendations for handling institutional challenges as well as advice for everyone involved in the advanced training of historians, from department chairs to their students, and from university administrators to the AHA itself.
Although focused on history, there are lessons here for any department. The Education of Historians for the Twenty-first Century is a model for in-depth analysis of doctoral education, with recommendations and analyses that have implications for the entire academy. This volume is required reading for historians, graduate students, university administrators, or anyone interested in the future of higher education.
Richard A. Lanham
University of Chicago Press, 1993
N. Clifford Ricker. Edited by Marci S. Uihlein
University of Illinois Press, 2025
In addition to providing the full text, Uihlein and the contributors trace Ricker’s career and delve into his practice of teaching. Subject experts explore specific topics. Thomas Leslie surveys contemporary construction practices in Chicago. Tom F. Peters considers Ricker’s writings in the context of the time while Rachel Will looks at masonry know-how and testing. Donald Friedman examines the teaching of iron and steel construction.
An illuminating look at a field and a legacy, The Elements of Construction rediscovers a figure that shaped the teaching of architecture and trained a generation that forever changed Chicago.
Laurence R. Veysey
University of Chicago Press, 1965
Fabio Lanza
Duke University Press, 2017
W. Ross Winterowd
Southern Illinois University Press, 1998
Tounderstand the history of "English," Ross Winterowd insists, one must understand how literary studies, composition-rhetoric studies, and influential textbooks interrelate. Stressing the interrelationship among these three forces, Winterowd presents a history of English studies in the university since the Enlightenment.
Winterowd’s history is unique in three ways. First, it tells the whole story of English studies: it does not separate the history of literary studies from that of composition-rhetoric studies, nor can it if it is going to be an authentic history. Second, it traces the massive influence on English studies exerted by textbooks such as Adventures in Literature, Understanding Poetry, English in Action, and the Harbrace College Handbook. Finally, Winterowd himself is very much a part of the story, a partisan with more than forty years of service to the discipline, not simply a disinterested scholar searching for the truth.
After demonstrating that literary studies and literary scholars are products of Romantic epistemology and values, Winterowd further invites controversy by reinterpreting the Romantic legacy inherited by English departments. His reinterpretation of major literary figures and theory, too, invites discussion, possibly argument. And by directly contradicting current histories of composition-rhetoric that allow for no points of contact with literature, Winterowd intensifies the argument by explaining the development of composition-rhetoric from the standpoint of literature and literary theory.
The Boyer 2030 Commission
University Press of Colorado, 2022
In 2021, The Association for Undergraduate Education at Research Universities (UERU)—with over 100 research university members and hosted at Colorado State University since 2013—recruited The Boyer 2030 Commission. This group was co-chaired by AAU’s Barbara R. Snyder and APLU’s Peter McPherson and included 14 additional distinguished higher ed leaders. The Boyer 2030 Commission sought to update the1998 Boyer Report, the landmark publication that inspired UERU’s founding in 2000 and helped spur nearly a quarter century of progress. Upon a year of research and reflection, the Boyer 2030 Commission issued The Equity/Excellence Imperative: A Blueprint for Undergraduate Education at U.S. Research Universities, reiterating the vital importance of undergraduate education at research universities and the need to invest in meeting what they name as the equity/excellence imperative.
From the Report:
"Research university presidents/chancellors, provosts, and their senior colleagues are today called upon to lead in a challenging world of deeply entrenched inequities laid bare by a deadly pandemic; a long-overdue racial reckoning; fractured democratic institutions and frayed democratic norms; an existential planetary climate emergency; a mental health crisis affecting all ages, including and especially traditional-aged undergraduate students; and growing public disaffection with and distrust of higher education. College-going and the prestige of a college degree are in decline, and, despite efforts to recruit and retain low-income undergraduate students, new data show that research universities were serving even fewer of them prior to the pandemic, let alone as a result. The Boyer 2030 Commission Report is organized around what the Commission has termed the ‘equity/excellence imperative,’ a belief that excellence and equity are inextricably entwined, such that excellence without equity (privilege reproducing privilege) is not true excellence, and equity (mere access) without excellence is unfulfilled promise. At this pivotal moment, the Boyer 2030 Commission poses these fundamental questions:
Meeting the equity/excellence imperative offers a leadership opportunity. Recognizing that diversity of mission, identity, organization, and culture is a long-standing strength of U.S. higher education, the Boyer 2030 Commission offers 11 provocations to catalyze the multiple actions needed for a research university to realize the equity/excellence imperative. This report will aid leaders as they work to meet this imperative, and millions of undergraduate students, their alma maters and broader human society will meaningfully and measurably benefit as a result."
This book is also available as an open access ebook through the UERU.
Co-Chairs: Barbara R. Snyder, President, AAU and Peter McPherson, President Emeritus, APLU Commission
Members: Michael Crow, President, Arizona State University; Andrew Delbanco, President, Teagle Foundation; Roger Ferguson, former President, TIAA-CREF; Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Director of Digital Humanities, Michigan State University; Kevin Kruger, President and CEO, NASPA–Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education; Gary May, Chancellor, University of California, Davis; Sarah Newman, Director of Art and Education at metaLAB, Harvard University; Lynn Pasquerella, President, American Association of Colleges & Universities; Deborah Santiago, Co-Founder and CEO, Excelencia in Education; Claude Steele, Lucie Stern Professor in the Social Sciences, Emeritus, Stanford University; Holden Thorp, Editor-in-Chief, Science; Eric Waldo, Founding Executive Director of Michelle Obama’s Reach Higher; Mary Wright, Associate Provost for Teaching and Learning, Brown University; Ex officio: Elizabeth Loizeaux, Boston University; Former President, UERU
Staff: Liz Bennett, Associate Director, UERU; Steven Dandaneau, Executive Director, UERU; Howard Gobstein, Senior Vice President, APLU; Ken Goldstein, Senior Vice President, AAU; Tara King, Education Program and Evaluation Manager, AAU; Emily Miller, Deputy Vice President, AAU; Mariah Pursley, Senior Coordinator, UERU; Kacy Redd, Associate Vice President, APLU; Liz Wasden, Research Assistant, University of Maryland, College Park
Eva Díaz
University of Chicago Press, 2014
Tamson Pietsch
University of Chicago Press, 2023
Tamson Pietsch
University of Chicago Press, 2023
This is an auto-narrated audiobook edition of this book.
The Floating University sheds light on a story of optimism and imperialist ambition in the 1920s.Edited by Louis Menand
University of Chicago Press, 1996
Malcolm S. Baroway
The Ohio State University Press, 2003
Herbert B. Asher
The Ohio State University Press, 2022
Bruce M. Shore
University of Chicago Press, 2014
Laurie A. Van Egeren
Michigan State University Press, 2026
The Handbook of Broader Impacts is an essential resource for researchers, administrators, policymakers, and anyone interested in the societal benefits of research. The volume brings together experts who trace the history of broader impacts as a U.S. National Science Foundation policy, explore its relationship to engaged scholarship, and provide models for institutional infrastructure and support. The book equips readers with tools to build the institutional capacity to advance the societal impacts of research, from developing researcher identities and competencies to navigating promotion and tenure. The Handbook of Broader Impacts explores a wide range of initiatives—open science, science communication, citizen science, informal STEM learning, K–12 partnerships, undergraduate research, teacher development, international collaborations, and more. By blending policy context, practical strategies, and real-world examples, the handbook spells out the value of broader impacts and demonstrates how research can contribute to direct and meaningful change.
Richard Joslyn and Bruce Stronach
Temple University Press, 2023
Christian Zacher
The Ohio State University Press, 2012
The OSU Board of Trustees and its presidential search committee found in Holbrook’s experience many reasons to invite her to lead Ohio’s flagship institution of higher education. Foremost among them was her familiarity with academic medicine, which they thought would give her a special understanding of OSU’s growing medical center. She was particularly interested in fostering multi-disciplinary programs and emphasizing outreach via pre-collegiate programs to broaden the pipeline for students who saw The Ohio State University as a goal.
Edited by Ignacio López-Calvo and Christina Lux
Northwestern University Press, 2019
The College of the University of Chicago
University of Chicago Press, 1992
George Dennis O'Brien
University of Chicago Press, 2002
Neal Lerner
Southern Illinois University Press, 2009
The Idea of a Writing Laboratory is a book about possibilities, about teaching and learning to write in ways that can transform both teachers and students.
Author Neal Lerner explores higher education’s rich history of writing instruction in classrooms, writing centers and science laboratories. By tracing the roots of writing and science educators’ recognition that the method of the lab––hands-on student activity—is essential to learning, Lerner offers the hope that the idea of a writing laboratory will be fully realized more than a century after both fields began the experiment.
Beginning in the late nineteenth century, writing instructors and science teachers recognized that mass instruction was inadequate for a burgeoning, “non-traditional” student population, and that experimental or laboratory methods could prove to be more effective. Lerner traces the history of writing instruction via laboratory methods and examines its successes and failures through case studies of individual programs and larger reform initatives. Contrasting the University of Minnesota General College Writing Laboratory with the Dartmouth College Writing Clinic, for example, Lerner offers a cautionary tale of the fine line between experimenting with teaching students to write and “curing” the students of the disease of bad writing.
The history of writing within science education also wends its way through Lerner’s engaging work, presenting the pedagogical origins of laboratory methods to offer educators in science in addition to those in writing studies possibilities for long-sought after reform. The Idea of a Writing Laboratory compels readers and writers to “don those white coats and safety glasses and discover what works” and asserts that “teaching writing as an experiment in what is possible, as a way of offering meaning-making opportunities for students no matter the subject matter, is an endeavor worth the struggle.”
Elizabeth Aries
Temple University Press, 2023
John Tagg
Rutgers University Press, 2019
John Willinsky
University of Chicago Press, 2017
Nancy Abelmann
Duke University Press, 2009
Drawing on ten years of ethnographic research with Korean American students at the University of Illinois and closely following multiple generations of a single extended Korean American family in the Chicago metropolitan area, Abelmann investigates the complexity of racial politics at the American university today. Racially hyper-visible and invisible, Korean American students face particular challenges as they try to realize their college dreams against the subtle, day-to-day workings of race. They frequently encounter the accusation of racial self-segregation—a charge accentuated by the fact that many attend the same Evangelical Protestant church—even as they express the desire to distinguish themselves from their families and other Korean Americans. Abelmann concludes by examining the current state of the university, reflecting on how better to achieve the university’s liberal ideals despite its paradoxical celebration of diversity and relative silence on race.
Laura Nichols
Rutgers University Press, 2020
Edited by Wayne C. Booth
University of Chicago Press, 1967
Randy Stoecker
Michigan State University Press, 2016
Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales and Magdalena L. Barrera
Duke University Press, 2023
Robert F. Durden
Duke University Press, 1993
Edited by Richard Arum, Paul Courant, and Allyson Flaster
University of Chicago Press, 2026
Showcases new measurement strategies for assessing the impact of a liberal arts education on students and society.
More than ever before, our society is questioning the meaning and value of higher education, and liberal arts education, in particular, has come under substantial scrutiny. Economic detractors characterize liberal arts education as impractical, claiming that college should prepare students for the workforce. Others object to the curriculum, portraying it as broken or misdirected. According to these critics, the liberal arts education being offered in the United States is marked by its rejection of core intellectual and ideological commitments.
In The Liberal Arts Advantage, a wide range of scholars argue for how and why a liberal arts education uniquely develops skill sets and expertise needed for individuals and society to thrive in the twenty-first century. The contributors address foundational questions about what liberal arts education is, how it has been conceptualized in the past, and what we can learn from its societal and professional impacts. They present compelling, unique research and new methodological tools for assessing the outcomes of liberal arts graduates. Offering grounded and well-founded arguments in favor of our education system, The Liberal Arts Advantage persuasively explains why educational leaders should reinvest in liberal arts education.
John Griffiths Pedley
University of Michigan Press, 2011
President of the Archaeological Institute of America, professor at the University of Michigan from 1889 to 1927, and president of the American Philological Association, Francis Kelsey was crucially involved in the founding or growth of major educational institutions. He came to maturity in a period of great technological change in communications, transportation, and manufacturing. Kelsey took full advantage of such innovations in his ceaseless drive to promote education for all, to further the expansion of knowledge, and to champion the benefits of the study of antiquity.
A vigorous traveler around the United States, Europe, and the Mediterranean, Kelsey strongly believed in the value of personally viewing sites ancient and modern and collecting artifacts that could be used by the new museums and universities that were springing up in the United States. This collecting habit put him in touch with major financiers of the day, including Charles Freer, Andrew Carnegie, and J. P. Morgan, as he sought their help for important projects.
Drawing heavily on Kelsey's daily diaries now held at the University of Michigan's Bentley Historical Library, John Griffiths Pedley gives us a biography that records the wide-ranging activities of a gifted and energetic scholar whose achievements mirrored the creative and contributive innovations of his contemporary Americans.
Ellen Schrecker
University of Chicago Press, 2021
Acuña, Rodolfo F
Rutgers University Press, 2011
The Making of Chicana/o Studies traces the philosophy and historical development of the field of Chicana/o studies from precursor movements to the Civil Rights era to today, focusing its lens on the political machinations in higher education that sought to destroy the discipline. As a renowned leader, activist, scholar, and founding member of the movement to establish this curriculum in the California State University system, which serves as a model for the rest of the country, Rodolfo F. Acuña has, for more than forty years, battled the trend in academia to deprive this group of its academic presence.
The book assesses the development of Chicana/o studies (an area of studies that has even more value today than at its inception)--myths about its epistemological foundations have remained uncontested. Acuña sets the record straight, challenging those in the academy who would fold the discipline into Latino studies, shadow it under the dubious umbrella of ethnic studies, or eliminate it altogether.
Building the largest Chicana/o studies program in the nation was no easy feat, especially in an atmosphere of academic contention. In this remarkable account, Acuña reveals how California State University, Northridge, was instrumental in developing an area of study that offers more than 166 sections per semester, taught by 26 tenured and 45 part-time instructors. He provides vignettes of successful programs across the country and offers contemporary educators and students a game plan--the mechanics for creating a successful Chicana/o studies discipline--and a comprehensive index of current Chicana/o studies programs nationwide.
Latinas/os, of which Mexican Americans are nearly seventy percent, comprise a complex sector of society projected to be just shy of thirty percent of the nation's population by 2050. The Making of Chicana/o Studies identifies what went wrong in the history of Chicana/o studies and offers tangible solutions for the future.
Howard H. Peckham
University of Michigan Press, 1994
Julie A. Reuben
University of Chicago Press, 1996
John K. Wilson
Duke University Press, 1995
David L. Featherman, Martin Hall, and Marvin Krislov, editors
University of Michigan Press, 2009
"Ambitious, provocative, and wide-ranging, this rich collection of essays from U.S. and South African perspectives reflects the thinking of thoughtful advocates of affirmative action."
---William G. Bowen, President Emeritus, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and President Emeritus, Princeton University
"Thoughtful commentary from outstanding experts on affirmative action’s future in two countries struggling to overcome a legacy of racial injustice."
---Derek Bok, 300th Anniversary University Research Professor, and President Emeritus, Harvard University
"An enormously important comparative study and reflection on affirmative (U.S.) and corrective (South Africa) action with exhaustive and sensitive treatment of a vital topic."
---Kader Asmal, Professor of Law, University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, and former Minister of Education, South Africa
A penetrating exploration of affirmative action's continued place in 21st-century higher education, The Next Twenty-five Years assembles the viewpoints of some of the most influential scholars, educators, university leaders, and public officials. Its comparative essays span the political spectrum and dissect debates in two nations to elucidate the legal, political, social, economic, and moral dimensions of affirmative action in higher education and its role in contributing to a just, equitable, and vital society.
David L. Featherman is Professor of Sociology and Psychology and Founding Director of the Center for Advancing Research and Solutions for Society at the University of Michigan.
Martin Hall is Vice-Chancellor of the University of Salford, Greater Manchester, and previously was Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Cape Town.
Marvin Krislov is President of Oberlin College and previously was Vice President and General Counsel at the University of Michigan.
D. Bret Leraul and Willy Thayer
Northwestern University Press, 2025
A landmark work of critical theory about the Western university from the Southern Cone
Renowned Chilean philosopher Willy Thayer’s La crisis no moderna de la universidad moderna, first published in 1996 and in an updated edition in 2019, is a landmark work of critical theory from the Southern Cone. Presented in English for the first time, The Non-Modern Crisis of the Modern University rewrites the idea of the Western university while also diagnosing the ills of postdictatorship Chile through a philosophically informed dismantling of its neoliberal institutionalization of higher education. Bret Leraul’s translation advances the vital work of globalizing critical university studies by disseminating theory from the Global South. If the university helped to construct Chile’s neoliberal society, Thayer’s polemical deconstruction of both will help readers reconstruct the cultural politics of the era to better understand the global hegemony of neoliberalism today.
Rick Bonus
Duke University Press, 2020