Searching for Utopia: Universities and Their Histories
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In Searching for Utopia, Hanna Holborn Gray reflects on...)
In Searching for Utopia, Hanna Holborn Gray reflects on the nature of the university from the perspective of todays research institutions. In particular, she examines the ideas of former University of California president Clark Kerr as expressed in The Uses of the University, written during the tumultuous 1960s. She contrasts Kerrs vision of the research-driven ?multiveristy with the traditional liberal educational philosophy espoused by Kerrs contemporary, former University of Chicago president Robert Maynard Hutchins. Grays insightful analysis shows that both Kerr, widely considered a realist, and Hutchins, seen as an oppositional idealist, were utopians. She then surveys the liberal arts tradition and the current state of liberal learning in the undergraduate curriculum within research universities. As Gray reflects on major trends and debates since the 1960s, she illuminates the continuum of utopian thinking about higher education over time, revealing how it applies even in todays climate of challenge.
An Academic Life: A Memoir (The William G. Bowen Memorial Series in Higher Education)
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A compelling memoir by the first woman president of a m...)
A compelling memoir by the first woman president of a major American university
Hanna Holborn Gray has lived her entire life in the world of higher education. The daughter of academics, she fled Hitler's Germany with her parents in the 1930s, emigrating to New Haven, where her father was a professor at Yale University. She has studied and taught at some of the world's most prestigious universities. She was the first woman to serve as provost of Yale. In 1978, she became the first woman president of a major research university when she was appointed to lead the University of Chicago, a position she held for fifteen years. In 1991, Gray was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, in recognition of her extraordinary contributions to education.
An Academic Life is a candid self-portrait by one of academia's most respected trailblazers. Gray describes what it was like to grow up as a child of refugee parents, and reflects on the changing status of women in the academic world. She discusses the migration of intellectuals from Nazi-held Europe and the transformative role these exiles played in American higher education--and how the émigré experience in America transformed their own lives and work. She sheds light on the character of university communities, how they are structured and administered, and the balance they seek between tradition and innovation, teaching and research, and undergraduate and professional learning.
An Academic Life speaks to the fundamental issues of purpose, academic freedom, and governance that arise time and again in higher education, and that pose sharp challenges to the independence and scholarly integrity of each new generation.
(Limited to 500 copies. Essays about the Renaissance, huma...)
Limited to 500 copies. Essays about the Renaissance, humanism, Christian antiquity, and Machiavelli. Spine lightly worn. vi , 73+ 1 pages. marbled paper-covered boards. 8vo..
Hannah Holborn Gray is a historian and education administrator who served as the first woman provost at Yale University and as the first woman president of the University of Chicago. She thus became the first woman to serve as the chief executive of a major coeducational university.
Background
Hannah Holborn Gray was born on October 25, 1930 in Heidelberg, Germany, the second child and only daughter of an academic couple, Hajo Holborn, a renowned professor of history, and Annemarie Bettman, who held a Ph. D. in classical philology. When the Hitler regime dismissed the liberal-thinking Hajo Holborn from his post at the Institute of Politics in Berlin, he emigrated with his family to New Haven, Connecticut, joining the History Department at Yale University where he remained for 35 years. Hannah grew up within Yale's ivy-covered walls.
Education
At age 15 Hannah entered Bryn Mawr, graduating summa cum laude in 1950. She went to Oxford on a Fulbright scholarship and then continued her studies in intellectual history at Harvard University, from which she received her Ph. D. in 1957. She held honorary degrees from 42 colleges and universities.
Career
Gray's teaching career began at Harvard University. She was a teaching fellow there from 1955 to 1957, an instructor from 1957 to 1959, and an assistant professor in 1959-1960. In the early 1960s the academic marketplace offered few opportunities for women historians. Hence it was Charles Gray's career that flourished. He joined and gained tenure in the History Department at the University of Chicago. Hannah followed her husband to Chicago, spending a year as a fellow in the Newberry Library, but on the margins of the university that was ultimately to offer her its presidency. Finally, the History Department made Hannah Gray an offer, abolishing its nepotism rules to secure its first academic couple.
Grey was granted tenure in 1964. Asked to redesign the history program, Hannah Gray got her first taste of administration. But it was her service on a faculty committee to review the non-reappointment of a controversial woman faculty member whose dismissal had provoked a major student sit-in that catapulted Hannah Gray into the limelight at Chicago. Demonstrating the powerful combination of rational discourse and steel nerves that was her trademark, Hannah Gray helped to resolve the explosive conflict. In 1972 she became the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University. There she contributed to planning and to the strengthening of academic programs.
In 1974 the president of Yale, Kingman Brewster, who knew of Gray from her service on the Yale board, named her Yale's first woman provost. Those were dark days for Yale, including a decline in finances and a debateover coeducation. In 1977, when Kingman Brewster became U. S. ambassador to Great Britain, he chose Gray to succeed him as acting president.
She never winced at making tough decisions, particularly in paring down a large deficit and taking a hard line on contract negotiations with Yale's striking cafeteria and maintenance workers. Whether it was the effects of the protracted strike which alienated many, or simply her gender, Gray did not receive the offer of the Yale presidency, which went instead to Bartlett Giamotti, with whom she had taught a course in Renaissance history. Almost overnight she was invited to become president of the University of Chicago. The offer came as a "great surprise. "
While she considered Yale her "second home, " she was helped in her decision to return to Chicago by the fact that Charles Gray felt like a "well-connected anamoly" at Yale. The Grays returned to the University of Chicago, where he held an appointment in history and she presided over a research university of 7, 900 students, a faculty of over 1, 000, and an endowment of $350 million. Her presidency spanned a time of economic decline in academe, especially a contraction in the numbers of graduate students, the hallmark of the intellectual life at Chicago. Gray espoused a concern for limits, but without thinking that "limitations are necessarily negative. "
Facing a deficit budget, she continued via a successful fundraising campaign to spend money to maintain quality in academic programs and to attract faculty. Once again confronted with a student protest, this one precipitated by the granting of a controversial award to former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Gray held her ground and delivered the award, but then appointed a faculty committee to consider abolishing the prize entirely.
Gray was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the American Philosophical Society, and a trustee of Bryn Mawr College. She was a member of the Pulitzer Prize board, the Council on Financial Aid to Education, and the Council on Foreign Relations in Chicago and New York. She served on the board of directors of J. P. Morgan & Company/Morgan Guaranty, Atlantic Richfield Company, and Ameritech.
In 1993 Gray resigned from her position at Chicago and returned to a teaching position in the history department.
(Limited to 500 copies. Essays about the Renaissance, huma...)
Membership
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Philosophical Society, Pulitzer Prize board, Council on Financial Aid to Education, the Council on Foreign Relations in Chicago and New York
Personality
To some Gray seemed cold and ruthless; to others warm, witty, and effusive.
Connections
On June 19, 1954 Hannah married Charles Montgomery Gray, a fellow Harvard graduate student. However, in marrying Charles she remained wedded as well to the academic world. Her husband died in April 2011. The couple had no children.