In 1948, fundamentalist theologian Edward John Carnell launched a spirited attack upon the “disease concept” of alcoholism. The Bible stated in no uncertain terms that drunkenness was a sin, Carnell wrote. By deeming alcoholism a sickness, clergymen and educators threatened to erode the “sense of guilt” that had once surrounded it. “The drinker takes the first glass as a free agent,” Carnell intoned. “He knows in advance the risks of his act, yet he proceeds…. As a moral, rational being, then, the drunkard is guilty and stands under God's severe wrath.” Yet in public schools and even in churches, Carnell complained, too many Americans learned to regard alcoholism as a medical affliction rather than as an ethical lapse. “The crux of the problem is whether man is made in the image of God, and thus is a responsible moral being, or whether he is just a product of naturalistic forces and is responsible to none,” Carnell concluded. “In judging drunkards, then, one's total world view comes into play.”

Philanthropy is typically defined as a charitable act, a gift, or an organization that dispenses such gifts. Rarely do we think negatively about gifts. However, as the literature in this area tells us, there is much mistrust of philanthropy and those behind it. Some critics have pointed toward the ulterior motives underlying the gifts of philanthropists. Is it really a gift or does it serve the philanthropist more than the recipient? Others have drawn attention to the unethical business practices of the corporations behind the philanthropies. How can “tainted” money promote good? Still others have questioned the amount of control that many philanthropists gain once their benefactors become dependent on them. Are philanthropists giving money just to extend the reach of their power? Despite these criticisms, philanthropy, in the words of Robert Bremner, “has been one of the principal methods of social advance.”

Between 1860 and 1900 Americans witnessed a revolution that ushered in a new type of university and a new academic order. During those years, the increasingly nonsectarian, scientific, and utilitarian university supplanted the denominationally affiliated liberal arts college as America's preeminent institution of higher learning. Many of the architects of this new university, whose ranks included university presidents, faculty, and civic leaders, christened it a “modern” institution of higher education, wrapping their academic innovations in the rhetoric of progress. Conversely, they often depicted their opponents and those associated with older collegiate traditions as academic relics wedded to retrograde practices and enamored of past ages. The popularity of the idea of progress in the late nineteenth century and its formative role in the rise of the modern university are well known. Less clear is the fate of representatives and elements of the older academic order during this period. If indeed the universities of the late nineteenth century were “modern” and “progressive,” what was to be the fate of the past—and educators and scholars committed to the wisdom of the past—within those institutions and higher education more generally?

As the primary means through which academic success was measured and professional credentials were established, competitive examinations for university degrees and civil service appointments became a frequently discussed topic among the Victorian and Edwardian elite in Great Britain. Students and dons (the term for college fellows with teaching and pastoral responsibilities) at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, as well as a whole range of outside observers, regularly commented on the importance of these exercises during the seven decades that passed between the curricular and administrative reforms of the 1850s and the conclusion of World War I, years in which these ancient institutions achieved their modern form and functioned, in the words of Jan Morris, as “power house [s]” and “conscious instruments of Victorian national greatness.” In an 1863 Student's Guide to the University of Cambridge, for example, J.R. Seeley, a famous Cambridge don and historian, celebrated the invigorating, youthful, and competitive nature of the Tripos (or Honors) examinations in a lengthy discussion of academic life: “Into these [examinations] flock annually the ablest young men … who during their University course have received all the instruction that the best Tutors, and all the stimulus that a competition well known to be severe, can give…. The contest is one into which the cleverest lads in the country enter [and] it may safely be affirmed that even the lowest place in these Triposes is justly called an honour.” By the 1860s, when Seeley first penned these comments, competitive examinations had become, in the words of one contemporary observer, “matters of … much interest and importance not only to those whose future success in life depended upon them, but to the public in general.” Public interest was further fueled, throughout this period, by numerous articles in the periodical press that discussed and debated the general value of competitive examinations and by the regular publication of test results in widely circulated, national newspapers such as the Times.