In the company of scholars : the struggle for the soul of higher education

"I began this book to articulate my sense of disappointment and alienation from the status I had fought so hard to achieve." A remarkable admission from an alumnus of Harvard Law School who has held tenured professorships in the law schools of Yale and Stanford and has taught in the law schools of Harvard and Chicago. In this personal reflection on the status of higher education, Julius Getman probes the tensions between status and meaning, elitism and egalitarianism, that challenge the academy and academics today. He shows how higher education creates a shared intellectual community among people of varied races and classes — while simultaneously dividing people on the basis of education and status. In the course of his explorations, Getman touches on many of the most current issues in higher education today, including the conflict between teaching and research, challenges to academic freedom, the struggle over multiculturalism, and the impact of minority and feminist activism. Getman presents these issues through relevant, often humorous anecdotes, using his own and others' experiences in coping with the constantly changing academic landscape. Written from a liberal perspective, the book offers another side of the story told in such works as Allan Bloom' The Closing of the American Mind and Roger Kimball' Tenured Radicals .

Critiques (5)

Critique du Publishers Weekly

His tone is dignified, but Getman--a University of Texas law professor and a former president of the American Association of University Professors--gets down in the dirt for this disquisition on our halls of ivy. Many academics are sneering, posturing, mind-wandering, lazy, turf-fighting snobs and liars, he avers, naming names while making confessions of his own. With this assortment of pensees, anecdotes and memories of his efforts as labor negotiator of academic disputes, Getman claims a loftier goal than expose. He intends to reveal how elitism and teaching in higher education are competing impulses--which he does make clear, though with some meanderings off course. Interviews with other academics illustrate his observation that the term ``academic community'' is a misnomer, with Stanford University appearing as a place of feverish scholarly territoriality. Getman cunningly skewers academic snobbery and pretense, but he offers few suggestions for reform. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Critique de Kirkus

Getman, a veteran law prof at Harvard and Yale now teaching at the University of Texas, provides a troubled liberal's response to recent critiques of higher education by Allan Bloom and Roger Kimball. The nature of academic activity, Getman argues, is its split between the egalitarian ideals of its educational mission and the elitism of its institutions, which ends up infecting even its most idealistic aspirants. Using a long series of anecdotes about his experiences as a law teacher, visiting scholar, arbitrator, and general counsel to the AAUP, Getman chronicles his growing disillusionment with the self-serving hypocrisy and cynical careerism of his chosen profession, yet manages a repeated refrain of admiration for challenging teachers, respected mentors, and principled debaters of the social issues of the 60's. The result is a wide-ranging monologue, long on examples but short on perspicuous generalizations, that shows Getman rather endearingly muddling through to insights (e.g., the principal function of academic institutions is to protect themselves; most professors are more interested in prestige than money; effective college teaching is so ill-recompensed that it has become its own reward) that most of his readers are likely to have won on their own long before they pick up his book. Getman's tender-minded liberalism--engagingly self-critical but lacking the polemical cutting edge of either forebears like Trilling and Schlesinger or opponents like Bloom and Kimball--is more likely to provoke nods of recognition from other right-minded liberals than to convince hard-charging conservative reformers, or even to advance the current debate.

Critique de Booklist

Getman restores urgency to a question that is usually little more than a rhetorical bellyache: Why is academic life so elitist and vindictive, so replete with invidious comparisons--so uncollegial? The distinguished law professor's own career at Yale, Stanford, Harvard, and the University of Chicago assures that his indictment of elitism isn't just sour grapes. He convinces us he takes it seriously by revealing himself, i.e., taking risks. "Reading final exams forced me to reevaluate my success as a teacher," he writes. "If I had touched, inspired, or altered the students in any significant way, why was so little evidence of it present in their answers?" Is there a teacher who hasn't asked the same question? But who else has ever admitted it in print? The shock of Getman's asking such a question induces granting his other observations about teaching and collegiality an authority they could not otherwise command. In the Company of Scholars will likely be welcomed as a liberal, multicultural antidote to The Closing of the American Mind and Tenured Radicals, but it gambles for much higher stakes, seeking to transcend political divisions and remind teachers of the values once dearest to them. ~--Roland Wulbert

Critique de Choice

A liberal overview of the issues facing American higher education today, this book is interesting counterpoise to such recent conservative attacks as Martin Anderson's Imposters in the Temple (1992). It deals with such topics as affirmative action, academic freedom, the role of women in academe, the curriculum, "publish or perish" and the academic profession, "political correctness," and the like. The tone of the book is personal; Getman (Law, Univ. of Texas) has taught at a number of prominent universities. He writes about American higher education reflecting on his own experiences and those of some of his friends and colleagues, as well as a few case studies. He frames his discussions around individuals--pointing out examples to make his points. The topics that he has chosen are relevant, the points made about such issues as the current state of academic freedom are thoughtful, and his analysis is interesting, but one wonders if Getman's comments hold true for all of American academe. The book reads more like a set of quite separate essays than a coherent whole. In the end, despite an engaging writing style and an original perspective, this book is less than convincing because of its paucity of data and because it is more of a memoir of a thoughtful law professor than a full-scale analysis of American higher education. Graduate students; faculty; general readers. P. G. Altbach; SUNY at Buffalo

Critique du Library Journal

Getman's analysis of academia is more of a personal probe into his own career, both as legal scholar and teacher. Nevertheless, he manages to juxtapose a lively discussion of topics clearly at the forefront of today's debate. Drawing on his own experiences at Indiana University, Harvard, and Yale, the often disgruntled author analyzes graduate school education, research and scholarship, academic freedom, and, of course, feminists and minorities. One theme that Getman stresses is egalitarianism vs. elitism. This theme is explored from many vantage points and is perhaps the most valuable aspect of this otherwise personal account of the failure of higher education. People in academia will nod their heads in agreement, but Getman offers nothing new to an already familiar territory.-- Nancy E. Zuwiyya, Binghamton City Sch. Dist., N.Y. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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