The University at War, 1914-25

In this wide-ranging account Tomás Irish makes a convincing case that World War I profoundly changed the university systems in Britain, France, and the United States, and, as a result, universities and their scholars have become essential to the war-making capacities of modern states in Europe and North America. Irish writes that in 1914 the academic communities in America and Europe began fighting “a proxy war” that lasted “for most of the conflict,” and that this was largely “a consequence of the networked scholarly world of the early twentieth century” (p. 5). He then meticulously documents how the “proxy war” morphed into the university practices and traditions that persist to the present. Irish describes the unprecedented role universities and their scholars played in providing expert knowledge for war making. As “cultural warriors,” they helped make the case for war, especially through the “demonization” of Germany and its scholars. Germany's destruction of the library at the University of Louvain in Belgium in the fall of 1914 epitomized German “transgression of the norms of war,” and this, writes Irish, “became central to the war's narrative” (p. 15). Because of the “networked ... nature of the university world,” he writes, “the destruction of the library by definition engaged an international audience” (p. 16

Art · Demonization · Economic history · German · Irish · Literature · Media studies · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · World War II · Classics · French Historical and Cultural Studies · History · Law · World Wars: History, Literature, and Impact