On the Battlefield of Merit
On the Battlefield of Merit

Author: Daniel R. Coquillette

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2015-10-12

Total Pages: 683

ISBN-13: 0674495683

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Harvard Law School is the oldest and, arguably, the most influential law school in the nation. U.S. presidents, Supreme Court justices, and foreign heads of state, along with senators, congressional representatives, social critics, civil rights activists, university presidents, state and federal judges, military generals, novelists, spies, Olympians, film and TV producers, CEOs, and one First Lady have graduated from the school since its founding in 1817. During its first century, Harvard Law School pioneered revolutionary educational ideas, including professional legal education within a university, Socratic questioning and case analysis, and the admission and training of students based on academic merit. But the school struggled to navigate its way through the many political, social, economic, and legal crises of the century, and it earned both scars and plaudits as a result. On the Battlefield of Merit offers a candid, critical, definitive account of a unique legal institution during its first century of influence. Daniel R. Coquillette and Bruce A. Kimball examine the school’s ties with institutional slavery, its buffeting between Federalists and Republicans, its deep involvement in the Civil War, its reluctance to admit minorities and women, its anti-Catholicism, and its financial missteps at the turn of the twentieth century. On the Battlefield of Merit brings the story of Harvard Law School up to 1909—a time when hard-earned accomplishment led to self-satisfaction and vulnerabilities that would ultimately challenge its position as the leading law school in the nation. A second volume will continue this history through the twentieth century.

The Half-Opened Door
The Half-Opened Door

Author: Marcia Synnott

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-12

Total Pages: 359

ISBN-13: 1351481592

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By the turn of the twentieth century, academic nativism had taken root in elite American colleges—specifically, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant hegemony was endangered by new kinds of student, many of them Catholic and Jewish immigrants. The newcomers threatened to displace native-born Americans by raising academic standards and winning a disproportionate share of the scholarships. The Half-Opened Door analyzes the role of these institutions, casting light on their place in class structure and values in the United States. It details the origins, history, and demise of discriminatory admissions processes and depicts how the entrenched position of the upper class was successfully challenged. The educational, and hence economic, mobility of Catholics and Jews has shown other groups—for example, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Spanish-speaking Americans—not only the difficulties that these earlier aspirants had in overcoming class and ethnic barriers, but the fact that it can be done. One of the ironies of the history of higher education in the United States is the use of quotas by admissions committees. Restrictive measures were imposed on Jews because they were so successful, whereas benign quotas are currently used to encourage underrepresented minorities to enter colleges and professional schools. The competing claims of both the older and the newer minorities continue to be the subject of controversy, editorial comments, and court cases—and will be for years to come.

Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press

Author: Max Hall

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 1986

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 9780674380806

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A university press is a curious institution, dedicated to the dissemination of learning yet apart from the academic structure; a publishing firm that is in business, but not to make money; an arm of the university that is frequently misunderstood and occasionally attacked by faculty and administration. Max Hall here chronicles the early stages and first sixty years of Harvard University Press in a rich and entertaining book that is at once Harvard history, publishing history, printing history, business history, and intellectual history. The tale begins in 1638 when the first printing press arrived in British North America. It became the property of Harvard College and remained so for nearly half a century. Hall sketches the various forerunners of the "real" Harvard University Press, founded in 1913, and then follows the ups and downs of its first six decades, during which the Press published steadily if not always serenely a total of 4,500 books. He describes the directors and others who left their stamp on the Press or guided its fortunes during these years. And he gives the stories behind such enduring works as Lovejoy's Great Chain of Being, Giedion's Space, Time, and Architecture, Langer's Philosophy in a New Key, and Kelly's Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings.