Reviewed by: Eisenhower in Command at Columbia by Douglas E. Clark Jeffrey Alstete, Associate Professor Douglas E. Clark. Eisenhower in Command at Columbia. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013. 132 pp. Hardcover: $55.00. ISBN 978-0-7391-7836-2. It has been said that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. Those of us who work in or study the field of higher education understand that our academic organizational culture is quite distinctive. However, choices in leadership are sometimes made that disregard our long-standing uniqueness by seeking to influence change with craftily selected administration appointments. This can happen in positions such as president, chancellor, professional school dean, and other senior-level officials. Douglas E. Clark writes an interesting and informative examination of a definitive situation of an event such as this in his book, Eisenhower in Command at Columbia. While historians and biographers have examined the life and career of Dwight D. Eisenhower as general and U.S. president previously, this book delves into the somewhat murky period when “Ike” was president of a prestigious Ivy League university. The research from this new book on Eisenhower’s tenure at Columbia is based on work from a doctoral program in higher education management at the University of Pennsylvania. Douglas Clark includes primary research collected from people who worked with President Eisenhower in addition to well-documented secondary sources. Clark is an experienced administrator and faculty member who acknowledges that there is a previous book on this topic (Jacobs, 2001) and that many broader biographies examine Eisenhower’s leadership in his military and political roles. However, this book seeks to critically examine the famous American leader and his appointment as president of an academic institution while highlighting [End Page 307] important characteristics of the inimitability of our postsecondary education system. Higher education has a tradition of shared governance and thoughtful deliberative consensus building that can be at odds with the rapid decision-making that is often needed in other arenas such as the military or business. Clark appropriately begins by examining the background of college presidencies in higher education and how the position has evolved over time. He reviews the typical presidential career path and how the expectations of leaders appointed to this position had evolved by the middle of the twentieth century. The second chapter appraises the condition of higher education at the beginning of the Cold War, after Eisenhower’s very successful career in military leadership, with an emphasis on Columbia University in particular set against the broader societal changes. Interestingly and perhaps conveniently for Eisenhower, Columbia was experiencing a challenging time in its leadership. The previous long-serving president, Nicholas Murray Butler, was believed to have remained in his position for too long while in declining health. After Butler’s eventual retirement in 1945, Clark states that Columbia’s trustees were aware that the university “entered the Cold War era with an outdated administrative structure, fund-raising challenges, debt, lack of momentum, and a leadership vacuum” (p. 19). This university had become somewhat stagnant and was seen as needing a strong leader to take command, make changes, and increase fund-raising. As a result, Clark proposes, someone like General Eisenhower might have seemed to be a suitable choice. To support this notion, Clark explores Eisenhower’s military leadership style and further examples of his experience in Chapter 3. Eisenhower was well known as a person with tremendous accomplishments as a military leader, including his ability to carefully manage important relationships with individuals and groups through a difficult period—specifically, such strong-willed and independent-minded leaders during World War II as Generals George S. Patton and Bernard Montgomery, and politicians such as Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. It is therefore understandable that Eisenhower’s background was seen as a potential solution to Columbia’s lack of strong internal leadership and external representation. Clark notes that General Eisenhower was selected and promoted as an appropriate institutional leader by university trustee Thomas J. Watson Sr., president of International Business Machines. President Eisenhower, in his previous role as commander of the Allied Forces, was reputed to be very skilled in thinking politically, managing effectively, and handling...