The Lost Soul of Higher Education

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.

Ellen Schrecker is professor of history at Yeshiva University who has written extensively about the Cold War red scare. Among her books are No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities, The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America, and Cold War Triumphalism: The Abuse of History after the Fall of Communism. Schrecker is the former editor of the American Association of University Professors’ magazine, Academe.