Books, Articles, and Items of Academic Interest

Michael Roth, the president of Wesleyan University, joins the throng of those who rise to the defense of the essentials in Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters (Yale University Press, 2014). This is a book meant to vindicate the nonutilitarian value of education, which in Roth’s view is education “to teach students to liberate, animate, cooperate, and instigate.” Roth is a historian and a humanist as well as president of one of the most politically correct colleges in America. Though he eschews college as mere vocational training, he upholds the ideal that a liberal education prepares one for the “working life” and for becoming an agent of social change. A question always to be posed for books of this sort is, “Who is the intended audience?” It is hard to imagine that a hard-core supporter of the Acad. Quest. (2014) 27:347–357 DOI 10.1007/s12129-014-9439-y

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