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Book Review
Canada and the United States
P. C. Kemeny. Princeton in the Nation's Service: Religious Ideals and Educational Practice, 18681928. (Religion in America Series.) New York: Oxford University Press. 1998. Pp. viii, 353. $45.00.
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Scholars are accustomed to summarizing changes in late nineteenth-century higher education with the phrase "the rise of the university." It implies the demise of a religiously based required curriculum, and the rise of a secular research-oriented university dedicated to production of scholars and professionals. Over the past fifteen years, careful studies of individual institutions and key players in this transition have aggregated to produce a more exact picture of this process. P. C. Kemeny's book now joins the ranks of the best of these studies. This book will be required reading for the rising generation of scholars seeking to understand the secularizing process in American higher education. |
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Kemeny looks at Princeton from the post-Civil War period to the Great Depression. These years include the administration of well-known Princeton presidents James McCosh, the last notable American philosopher of the Scottish philosophy, and Woodrow Wilson, the Progressive-era president. The transition from McCosh to Wilson encapsulates the central issue of Kemeny's study: how did the evangelical mission of McCosh's Princeton become the liberal Protestant vision of Wilson's? Kemeny shows how each president engaged the challenge of combining religion and educational mission in curriculum, campus organizations, and staff, while negotiating the interests of alumni, trustees, faculty, and students. |
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