Academic Crusader
ANGOFF, CHARLES
Academic Crusader A Place of Light. By Clarence and Mary Decker. Hermitage. 288 pp. $3.75. Reviewed by Charles Angoff Author, "Journey to the Dawn," "In the Morning Light' and other...
...Among his most ardent defenders were the financier and his wife, who, it turned out, appreciated Dr...
...Miracle of miracles, here is a book by a former university president and his wife that is both exciting and illuminating, that reveals a civilized attitude and a courageous spirit, and that casts a powerful light upon the state of higher learning in the United States...
...Decker got into difficulties which finally compelled him to resign...
...There is no pussyfooting on "controversial" issues...
...He brought the outside world of the fine arts and of conflicting ideas to it: a constant stream of truly eminent men and women came to his campus to lecture to the students and to inspire the faculty: Andre Maurois, Thomas Mann...
...Thomas Hart Benton, Luis Quintanilla, Bela Bartok...
...John Gould Fletcher...
...Decker was a good administrator...
...One hot summer night in 1950, I was a guest, together with the Deckers and several others, at a dinner given in Kansas City by a local financier and his wife...
...But that was probably the least of his accomplishments...
...He added a dozen academic buildings and three professional schools, and he enlarged the student body from 750 to over 3,500...
...He operated in a city dominated by one newspaper and by the parochial McKinley philosophy that seems to prevail in its editorial chambers, Yet, he made no secret of his -y mpathy with much of the New and Fair Deals...
...Decker's contributions to the University of Kansas City and to higher education in general far better than did some treacherous faculty members...
...They write about their experiences informally, touching upon every aspect of them in a pleasant, almost conversational manner...
...Sir Norman Angell...
...Finally, he nursed and guided the University of Kansas City Review, a truly cultural quarterly of general appeal...
...The financier clearly had other ideas...
...Madame Pandit...
...A teacher himself, he was fully aware of the existence of professors who rely upon "ten-year-old notes outlines and schedules," but he also knew that the average university professor is eager to learn and to impart his knowledge, and he set it down as a principle of his administration that "we should be disturbed if colleges and universities wholly abandoned the spirit of the cloistered scholar...
...Situated in the heart of an academic area where "practical courses, from advanced retailing to intermediate interpretative dancing, had done such heavy damage to the genuine academic spirit, he set about to save his institution from this plague and to make of it, in Disraelis phrase, "a place of light, of liberty and of learning...
...It is not written in vague, magniloquent prose, and there are no irrelevant quotations from the "writings" of other university presidents...
...I was a bit startled by the Deckers' outspokenness, for I had reason to believe that the financier had influence in the inner councils of the university...
...The Deckers expressed doubt about the Senator's fitness for the Presidency...
...Clarence Decker offer a formal report on his presidency of the University of Kansas City from 1938 to 1953...
...And he saw the sharp contradiction between "citizen education" and "vocational training...
...The Deckers do not attempt a formal appraisal of American higher education, nor does Dr...
...Decker didn t have it easy, but he always kept his head high...
...Reviewed by Charles Angoff Author, "Journey to the Dawn," "In the Morning Light' and other books This book is subtitled "The Story of a University Presidency," but it is not at all what one might expect from a book with such a subtitle...
...Carl Sandburg...
...Decker will be remembered long after hundreds of other university presidents are forgotten...
...The talk turned to the late Senator Taft...
...He did something more for the University of Kansas City...
...He welcomed qualified Negro students—a move which startled some of the respectable burghers of Kansas City, but which worked out very well and set a fine example to more timid university administrators in that part of the country...
...Three years passed, and Dr...
...Decker was interested in "citizenship," of course, but he was fully aware that many of those who clamored most loudly for "schools of citizenship'' did so chiefly in the hope that such schools would "rid the country of New Dealers...
...There is no dullness...
Vol. 37 • August 1954 • No. 31
