Idealism and liberal education /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Freedman, James O.
Imprint:Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 2000, ©1996.
Description:1 online resource (186 pages)
Language:English
Subject:
Format: E-Resource Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/11257825
Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:9780472023837
0472023837
0472106929
9780472106929
9780472086702
0472086707
Digital file characteristics:data file
Notes:Print version record.
Summary:"With refreshing eloquence, James O. Freedman sets down the American ideals that have informed his life as an intellectual, a law professor, and a college and university president. He examines the content and character of liberal education, discusses the importance of letters and learning in forming his own life and values, and explores how the lessons and the habits of mind instilled by a liberal education can give direction and meaning to one's life. He offers a stirring defense of affirmative action in higher education. And he describes how, in the midst of undergoing chemotherapy for cancer, liberal education helped him in the most human of desires - the yearning to make order and sense out of his experience."--Jacket.
Other form:Print version: Freedman, James O. Idealism and liberal education. Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 2000, ©1996
Standard no.:10.3998/mpub.23245
Review by Choice Review

Freedman's wise and engaging essays challenge the prevalent image of university presidents as administrators unwilling or unable to articulate the larger social purposes of education. This compilation of previously published essays and public lectures results in a diversely focused and inspirational book that is part intellectual autobiography, part rationale for broad and liberal learning, part exploration of the character attributes that make some 20th-century intellectual leaders worthy of our esteem. Trained as an attorney, Freedman clerked for Thurgood Marshall, was dean of the law school at the University of Pennsylvania, president of the University of Iowa, and is now president at Dartmouth. This experience serves as backdrop to his exploration of his own awakening to ideas and reflects on the predicament of students today. Unique in its optimistic tone and range of commentary (with reflections on the lives and work of Flannery O'Connor, Martin Luther King Jr., Vaclav Havel, George Kennan, Eudora Welty, Ralph Bunche, and Louis Brandeis, among many others), this book will provoke readers to further study. Especially noteworthy is his strong defense of diversity and equality in education. Highly recommended for general readers and undergraduates. T. R. Glander Nazareth College of Rochester

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review