Book Description
Publication Date: October 30, 2007 | ISBN-10: 0226561712 | ISBN-13: 978-0226561714
The inauguration of Robert Maynard Hutchins as the
fifth President of the University of Chicago in 1929 coincided with a
drastically changed social and economic climate throughout the world.
And Hutchins himself opened an era of tumultuous reform and debate
within the University. In the midst of the changes Hutchins started and
the intense feelings they stirred, William H. McNeill arrived at the
University to pursue his education. In
Hutchins' University he tells what it was like to come of age as a undergraduate in those heady times.
Hutchins'
scathing opposition to the departmentalization of learning and his
resounding call for reforms in general education sparked controversy and
fueled debate on campus and off. It became a struggle for the heart and
soul of higher education—and McNeill, as a student and then as an
instructor, was a participant. His account of the university's history
is laced with personal reminiscences, encounters with influential fellow
scholars such as Richard McKeon, R. S. Crane, and David Daiches, and
details drawn from Hutchins' papers and other archives.
McNeill
sketches the interplay of personalities with changing circumstances of
the Depression, war, and postwar eras. But his central concern is with
the institutional life of the University, showing how student behavior,
staff and faculty activity and even the Hyde Park neighborhood all
revolved around the charismatic figure of Robert Maynard Hutchins—shaped
by him and in reaction against him.
Successive transformations
of the College, and the tribulations of the ideal of general or liberal
education are central to much of the story; but the memoir also explores
how the University was affected by such events as Red scares, the
remarkably successful Round Table radio broadcasts, the
abolition of big time football, and the inauguration of the nuclear age under the west stands of Stagg Field in 1942.
In short,
Hutchins' University sketches an extraordinarily vibrant period for the University of Chicago
and
for American higher education. It will revive old controversies among
veterans from those times, and may provoke others to reflect anew about
the proper role of higher education in American society.
From Publishers Weekly
This slim volume explains better than any other recent study the
myths and realities behind the renowned educator Robert Maynard Hutchins
(1899-1977) and the university he ran for more than 20 years. A student
at the University of Chicago during Hutchins's glory days and until
recently a professor of history there, McNeill offers an insider's
account of Hutchins's efforts to transform an institution devoted
primarily to research--"a completely new phenomenon in the 1890s," when
the University of Chicago opened its doors--into a teacher-driven hotbed
of discussion, centered on an undergraduate college "so wonderful and
vibrant" that it "always hovered on the edge of the absurd." The wonder
becomes clear in the author's detailed descriptions of Hutchins's fierce
battles with faculty to improve the state of liberal education and
establish an atmosphere of "intellectual stimulation." The absurdity is
evident in his portrait of Hutchins as a "quixotic character" whose
early success (he became president of the university at age 30) was
overshadowed by a failure to specify "what the metaphysical and moral
principles or the detailed content of what such an education would be."
Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Review
"A stirring picture of a remarkable time at the University of
Chicago and of a remarkable man." - Chicago Sun-Times "[McNeill]
provides a view of the Hutchins years which is respectful and sober. The
academic environment was divisive, the educational milieu was
hot-house." - London Review of Books"
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