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Catholic Higher Education in Protestant America

The Jesuits and Harvard in the Age of the University

Kathleen A. Mahoney

Publication Date
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Winner of the 2005 New Scholar Book Award given by Division F: History and Historiography of the American Educational Research Association
Winner of the New Scholar's Book Award given by the American Educational Research Association Division F (History of Education)

In 1893 Harvard University president Charles W. Eliot, the father of the modern university, helped implement a policy that, in effect, barred graduates of Jesuit colleges from regular admission to Harvard Law School. The resulting controversy—bitterly contentious and widely publicized—was a defining moment in the history of American...

Winner of the 2005 New Scholar Book Award given by Division F: History and Historiography of the American Educational Research Association
Winner of the New Scholar's Book Award given by the American Educational Research Association Division F (History of Education)

In 1893 Harvard University president Charles W. Eliot, the father of the modern university, helped implement a policy that, in effect, barred graduates of Jesuit colleges from regular admission to Harvard Law School. The resulting controversy—bitterly contentious and widely publicized—was a defining moment in the history of American Catholic education, illuminating on whose terms and on what basis Catholics and Catholic colleges would participate in higher education in the twentieth century.

In Catholic Higher Education in Protestant America, Kathleen Mahoney considers the challenges faced by Catholics as the age of the university opened. She describes how liberal Protestant educators such as Eliot linked the modern university with the cause of a Protestant America and how Catholic students and educators variously resisted, accommodated, or embraced Protestant-inspired educational reforms. Drawing on social theories of cultural hegemony and insider-outsider roles, Mahoney traces the rise of the Law School controversy to the interplay of three powerful forces: the emergence of the liberal, nonsectarian research university; the development of a Catholic middle class whose aspirations included attendance at such institutions; and the Catholic church's increasingly strident campaign against modernism and, by extension, the intellectual foundations of modern academic life.

Reviews

Reviews

A fascinating documentary on the struggles between 'descendants of Luther and the sons of Loyola'... Explains how the creation of modern secular universities forced Catholic colleges to adapt or languish.

The values were, on both sides, largely unexamined and, as a result, produced many ironies when they were called into explicit conflict. Mahoney's account is particularly good at exposing these ironies in a way that is at once sympathetic and unsparing.

A fascinating story.

A careful historical study of Catholic (especially Jesuit) higher education in Protestant America in the late 1800s and early 1900s... Highly recommended.

With its attention to educational and cultural history, Mahoney's work makes a needed contribution to American Catholic Studies.

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About

Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
360
ISBN
9780801881350
Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: Between Protestants and Catholics
1. The Descendants of Luther and the Sons of Loyola
2. Time: The Harvard Law School Controversy and the Modern Imperative
Part II

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: Between Protestants and Catholics
1. The Descendants of Luther and the Sons of Loyola
2. Time: The Harvard Law School Controversy and the Modern Imperative
Part II: Among Catholics
3. Persons: The Bonds of Religion and the Claims of Class
4. Place: Americanism and the Higher Education of Catholics
Part III: Among Jesuits
5. Novus Ordo Academicus and the Travails of Adapting
Conclusion
Appendixes
A. Harvard Law School's Select List of Colleges, 1893
B. Colleges and Programs Added and Removed from Harvard Law School's Select List of Institutions, 1894–1903
C. President Eliot and Jesuit Colleges, by Timothy Brosnahan, S.J.
D. Select List of Jesuit Superiors, Provincials, and Presidents
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Author Bio
Featured Contributor

Kathleen A. Mahoney

Kathleen A. Mahoney, formerly an assistant professor of education at Boston College, is president of the Humanitas Foundation in New York City.