Bevat: Liberal versus practical orientation of curriculum development / Olusegun Oladipo ; Lessons of world history of the university for Nigeria today / Joseph Kenny ; Human capital in Nigerian universities : the presence of the past and the thrust of the future / Ifeanyi Onyeonoru ; University decline and its reasons : imperatives for change and relevance / Francis Egbokhare ; Knowledge production, cultural identity and globalization : African universities and the challenges of authenticity and transformation in the twenty-first century / Kolawole A. Owolabi ; Idealism versus pragmatism in the production of knowledge in Nigerian universities / Olatunji A. Oyeshile ; The university and the African crisis of morality : lessons from Nigeria / Ogbo Ugwuanyi ; Subjectivity, hermeneutics and culture / George F. Mclean ; Value systems and the interest groups of a university / Francis M. Isichei ; The place of theology in the university curriculum / Anthony A. Akinwale.

The Populist Vision is about how Americans responded to wrenching changes in the national and global economy. In the late nineteenth century, the telegraph and steam power made America and the world a much smaller place. The new technologies also made possible large-scale bureaucratic organization and centralization. Corporations grew exponentially and the rich amassed great fortunes. Those on the short end of these changes responded in the Populist revolt, one of the most effective challenges to corporate power in American history. But what did Populism represent? Half a century ago, scholars such as Richard Hofstadter portrayed the Populist movement as an irrational response of backward-looking farmers to the challenges of modernity. Since then, historians have largely restored Populism's good name. But in so doing, they have sustained a romantic notion of Populism as the resistance movement of tradition-based and pre-modern communities to a modern and commerical society, or even a counterforce to the Enlightenment ideals of innovation and progress. Postel's work marks a departure. He argues that the Populists understood themselves as, and were in fact, modern people. Farmer Populists strove to use the new innovations for their own ends. They sought scientific and technical knowledge, formed highly centralized organizations, launched large-scale cooperative businesses, and pressed for state-centered reforms on the model of the nation's most elaborate bureaucracy--the Postal Service. Hundreds of thousands of Populist farm women sought education, employment in schools and offices, and a more modern life. Miners, railroad workers, and other labor Populists joined with farmers to give impetus to the regulatory state. Activists from Chicago, San Francisco, and other urban centers lent the movement an especially modern tone. Modernity was also menacing, as the ethos of racial progress influenced white Populists in their pursuit of racial segregation and Chinese exclusion. The Populist Vision offers a broad reassessment. Working extensively with primary sources, it looks at Populism as a national movement, taking into account both the leaders and the led. It focuses on farmers but also wage-earners and bohemian urbanites. It examines topics from technology, business, and women's rights, to government, race, and religion. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, business and political leaders are claiming that critics of their new structures of corporate control represent anti-modern attitudes towards the new realities of globalization. The Populist experience puts into question such claims about who is modern and who is not. And it suggests that modern society is not a given but is shaped by men and women who pursue alternative visions of what the modern world should be.

The Lost Promise is a magisterial examination of the turmoil that rocked American universities in the 1960s, with a unique focus on the complex roles played by professors as well as students. The 1950s through the early 1970s are widely seen as American academia’s golden age, when universities—well-funded and viewed as essential for national security, economic growth, and social mobility—embraced an egalitarian mission. Swelling in size, schools attracted new types of students and professors, including radicals who challenged their institutions’ calcified traditions. But that halcyon moment soon came to a painful and confusing end, with consequences that still afflict the halls of ivy. In The Lost Promise, Ellen Schrecker—our foremost historian of both the McCarthy era and the modern American university—delivers a far-reaching examination of how and why it happened. Schrecker illuminates how US universities’ explosive growth intersected with the turmoil of the 1960s, fomenting an unprecedented crisis where dissent over racial inequality and the Vietnam War erupted into direct action. Torn by internal power struggles and demonized by conservative voices, higher education never fully recovered, resulting in decades of underfunding and today’s woefully inequitable system. As Schrecker’s magisterial history makes blazingly clear, the complex blend of troubles that disrupted the university in that pivotal period haunts the ivory tower to this day.