Clark Kerr’s World of Higher Education Reaches the 21st Century: Chapters in a Special History

Abstract

DOI 10.1515/cjpp-2012-0045 Calif. J. Politics Policy 2013; 5(1): 124–131 Neil J. Smelser Clark Kerr’s World of Higher Education Reaches the 21st Century: Chapters in a Special History By Sheldon Rothblatt (Editor) Foreword by Varthan Gregorian Springer: Dordrecht, The Netherlands, pp. xv+249 This reflective work on Clark Kerr, his times, his historical significance, his legacy, and the fate of his accomplishments during the past half-century is especially to be welcomed, on four counts: After a lifetime of recurrent adulation and vilification, the appreciation of Kerr’s historical accomplishments has solidified into the appropriate view that he was the most creative and outstanding leader of higher education in the 20th century. The editor, Sheldon Rothblatt, is the ideal person to bring together this current assessment – most eminent historian of higher education, career-long citizen of Kerr’s University of California, and friend and confidant of Kerr over several decades. The contributors, who will be identified in this essay, are outstanding schol- ars and thinkers, knowledgeable about Kerr and his work and the recent history of higher education generally. Rothblatt’s selection of this cast guaranteed that the scope of the book is international, not parochial. There are tangible historical signs – and much hysterical dread – that Kerr’s world, as enunciated in The Uses of the University (1963) and embodied in the California Master Plan for Higher Education, is endangered, perhaps crumbling, over the past decades under the weight of adverse historical forces. It is most important to address and evaluate the historical evidence as well as the signifi- cance of that evidence, 50 years later. This book makes many contributions to unraveling the questions posed by the unhappy diagnosis. 1 Recapitulation The volume defies simple summary, so I present a very general overview, then take up some selected themes. In an appreciative Foreword, Vartan Gregorian