The Lost Soul of Higher Education

Book excerpt: Schrecker, the leading historian of the McCarthy-era witch hunts, examines both the key fronts in the present battles over higher ed, and their historical parallels in previous eras - offering a deeply-researched chronicle of the challenges to academic freedom, set against the rapidly changing structure of the academy itself. "The Lost Soul of Higher Education" tells the interwoven stories of successive, well-funded ideological assaults on academic freedom by outside pressure groups aimed at undermining the legitimacy of scholarly study, viewed alongside decades of eroding higher education budgets -- a trend that has sharply accelerated during the recent economic downturn.