Books in Brief: The Fall of the American University

The Fall of the American University, by Adam Ulam (Library Press, 217 pp., $7.95). From his vantage point as a democratic-liberal professor at Harvard, Dr. Ulam perceptively chronicles and analyzes the past two decades of Temptation and Fall in the groves of academe. Public faith in education, coupled with the machinations of academic operators, produced Busybody-Behemoth U, where ability to secure government grants outranked scholarship or teaching ability. As schools became involved in the “quest for social justice,” and professors fell thrall to the cult of youth, relevance replaced substance. Gresham’s Law prevailed: concern drove out reason, charisma banished competence. The Children’s Crusade by bored, media-beatified youth overwhelmed the minority of academics who wanted universities to be houses of intellect, not firstaid stations for social ills. Although the crusade fad has declined, Professor Ulam fears a continuing degradation of education unless realism supplants cant: “For the American university the beginning of wisdom and reform must lie in acknowledging that there are clear limits to what education can do for the individual and society.” Write on. d. w. cooper