Ivory Towers and Nationalist Minds: Universities, Leadership,
and the Development of the American State. By Mark R.
Nemec. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006. 312p. $70.00
cloth, $24.95 paper.
The end of the Civil War ushered a new era in American state-building
as the government sought to reshape the structure and identity of
politics, group formation, and individual identity. During this
period, nongovernmental agencies became central to disseminating and
legitimating state authority. Although universities have been
recognized as influential agencies, Mark R. Nemec argues that prior
works overlooked the process by which they gained this influence. In
Ivory Towers and Nationalist Minds, Nemec
illuminates the rise of American universities as active partners and
independent agents of state building from 1862 to 1920. Universities
provided services to national development through promoting
democratic ideals, industrial competitiveness, and intellectual
vanguardism. Primarily through the “institutional entrepreneurship”
of university presidents, American universities rapidly expanded
their role and influence in society. Rather than the government, it
was the university leaders who took the leading role to define what
their universities would become.