From the president of Wesleyan University, a compassionate and provocative manifesto on the crises confronting higher education In this bracing book, Michael S. Roth stakes out a pragmatist path through the thicket of issues facing colleges today to carry out the mission of higher education. With great empathy, candor, subtlety, and insight, Roth offers a sane approach to the noisy debates surrounding affirmative action, political correctness, and free speech, urging us to envision college as a space in which students are empowered to engage with criticism and with a variety of ideas. Countering the increasing cynical dismissal—from both liberals and conservatives—of the traditional core values of higher education, this book champions the merits of different diversities, including intellectual diversity, with a timely call for universities to embrace boldness, rigor, and practical idealism.

The teaching and learning of mathematics has degenerated into the realm of rote memorization, the outcome of which leads to satisfactory formal ability but not real understanding or greater intellectual independence. The new edition of this classic work seeks to address this problem. Its goal is to put the meaning back into mathematics. "Lucid . . . easily understandable".--Albert Einstein. 301 linecuts.

This volume of Perspectives opens with two contrasting perspectives on the purpose of higher education at the dawning of the university age-perspectives that continue to define the debate today. A. J. Angulo recreates the controversy surrounding the founding and early years of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Whether presented as an alternative to or a repudiation of the prevailing classical liberal education, MIT was rejected as inherently inferior by college defenders. George Levesque offers a penetrating reappraisal of Yale president Noah Porter (1870-1886). Known almost solely for his role as a college defender, Porter is revealed as a vigorous scholar who became fixated with preserving the strengths of Yale College. As these matters were vigorously debated during these years, Porter's position was superseded by more powerful forces.