A New Deal for the Humanities brings together twelve prominent scholars who shed light on the many concerns swirling around the humanities today—exploring the history of the liberal arts in America, their present state, and their future direction. The volume focuses on public higher education, for it is in our state schools that the liberal arts are taught to the greatest numbers, where the decline of those fields would be most damaging, and where their strength is most threatened.

In the 1940s, Rutgers was a small liberal arts college for men. Today, it is a major public research university, a member of the Big Ten and of the prestigious Association of American Universities. In Rutgers since 1945, historian Paul G. E. Clemens chronicles this remarkable transition from the cold war, to the student protests of the 1960s and 1970s, to the growth of political identity on campus, and to the increasing commitment to big-time athletics, all of which are just a few of the innumerable newsworthy elements that have driven Rutgers’s evolution. 

 

In Raised at Rutgers, Richard L. McCormick offers a candid account of his life and work at one of America’s leading public universities, from his childhood in the 1950s through his tumultuous presidency which began in 2002 and lasted nearly a decade. McCormick not only paints a vivid portrait of what it is like to run a major university, he also illuminates the most important challenges facing higher education in America.

Checklist for Change diagnoses the problems in American higher education today and describes principal reforms that must occur in combination in order for it to remain a vital enterprise: a fundamental recasting of federal financial aid; new mechanisms for better channeling the competition among colleges and universities; recasting the undergraduate curriculum; and a stronger, more collective faculty voice in governance that defines not why, but how the enterprise must change.

Using case studies from universities throughout the nation, Doing Diversity in Higher Education examines the role faculty play in improving diversity on their campuses. The power of professors to enhance diversity has long been underestimated, their initiatives often hidden from view. 

Candid, provocative, and sometimes with a wry sense of humor, the thirty-five essays in this anthology speak to and offer support for any woman attempting to combine work and family, as well as anyone who is interested in improving the university's ability to live up to its reputation to be among the most progressive of American institutions.