The autocratic academy : reenvisioning rule within America's universities / Timothy V. Kaufman-Osborn.

Author/creator Kaufman-Osborn, Timothy V., 1953- author.
Format Electronic
PublicationDurham : Duke University Press, 2023.
Description1 online resource (viii, 342 pages)
Supplemental ContentJSTOR
Subjects

Contents A prologue in the form of a puzzle -- Imperious regents and disposable custodians -- The neoliberal corporation debunked -- Corporate types -- William & Mary dispossessed -- "The college of Tyrannus" -- The Marshall Plan -- Psychasthenia universitatis (or The malady of the academy) -- "Shared governance" as placebo -- Outsourcing self-governance -- "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall . . ."
Abstract "Critics of contemporary US higher education often point to the academy's "corporatization" as one of its defining maladies. However, argues Timothy V. Kaufman-Osborn in The Autocratic Academy, American colleges and universities have always been organized as corporations in which the power to rule is legally vested in and monopolized by antidemocratic governing boards. This institutional form, Kaufman-Osborn contends, is antithetical to the free inquiry that defines the purpose of higher education. Tracing the history of the American academy from the founding of Harvard (1636), through the Supreme Court's Dartmouth v. Woodward ruling (1819), and into the twenty-first century, Kaufman-Osborn shows how the university's autocratic legal constitution is now yoked to its representation on the model of private property. Explaining why appeals to the cause of shared governance cannot succeed in wresting power from the academy's autocrats, Kaufman-Osborn argues that American universities must now be reincorporated in accordance with the principles of democratic republicanism. Only then can the academy's members hold accountable those chosen to govern and collectively determine the disposition of higher education's unique public goods"-- Provided by publisher.
Bibliography noteIncludes bibliographical references and index.
Source of descriptionDescription based on print version record.
Issued in other formPrint version: Kaufman-Osborn, Timothy V. (Timothy Vance), 1953- Autocratic academy. Durham : Duke University Press, 2023 9781478019824 9781478017127
Genre/formHistory.
LCCN 2022043227
ISBN9781478024392
ISBN1478024399
ISBN(paperback)
ISBN(paperback)
ISBN(hardcover)
ISBN(hardcover)
Stock number22573/cats590243 JSTOR
Stock numberF88EC47E-4AA1-40CF-B97F-D3E8F9DE9848 OverDrive, Inc. http://www.overdrive.com

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