William M. Chace is Professor of English and President Emeritus at Emory University. He is the author of two books, The Political Identities of Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot and Lionel Trilling: Criticism and Politics.
In One Hundred Semesters, William Chace mixes incisive analysis with memoir to create an illuminating picture of the evolution of American higher education over the past half century. Chace follows his own journey from undergraduate education at Haverford College to teaching at Stillman, a traditionally African-American college in Alabama, in the 1960s, to his days as a professor at Stanford and his appointment as president of two very different institutions--Wesleyan University and Emory University.
Chace takes us with him through his decades in education--his expulsion from college, his boredom and confusion as a graduate student during the Free Speech movement at Berkeley, and his involvement in three contentious cases at Stanford: on tenure, curriculum, and academic freedom. When readers follow Chace on his trip to jail after he joins Stillman students in a civil rights protest, it is clear that the ideas he presents are born of experience, not preached from an ivory tower.
The book brings the reader into both the classroom and the administrative office, portraying the unique importance of the former and the peculiar rituals, rewards, and difficulties of the latter.
Although Chace sees much to lament about American higher education--spiraling costs, increased consumerism, overly aggressive institutional self-promotion and marketing, the corruption of intercollegiate sports, and the melancholy state of the humanities--he finds more to praise. He points in particular to its strength and vitality, suggesting that this can be sustained if higher education remains true to its purpose: providing a humane and necessary education, inside the classroom and out, for America's future generations. "Chace here recounts a young man's maturation and offers insight into the challenges of university administration. . . . Chace is a gifted storyteller, appealingly honest in analyzing what he did well and where he went wrong."---Evelyn Beck, Library Journal "An unusual book, 100 Semesters is part memoir, part analysis and part how-to manual. . . . Chace's prose is clear and compelling, a pleasure to read as much for its style as for its ideas. It is, in a word, eloquent."---Mark E. Hayes, Atlanta Journal-Constitution "Hopeful yet sober, Chace's memoir provides an invaluable perspective on the challenges facing higher education." "A thoughtful commentary on both the promises and challenges colleges and universities have and continue to face. . . . [T]his is a much-needed, authentic commentary on the changes which happened throughout American higher education from one who was a direct participant in academia. . . . Highly recommended." "A very useful, if not crucial addition, to the libraries of aspiring humanists and administrators in U.S. higher education. Although neither a call to arms nor a road-map for change, Chace's book is a rich, timely, and sober reflection on higher education's upper half at the start of the twenty-first century."---Tim Lacy, History and Education "I have read Bill Chace's book and found it moving and full of what Nietzsche called 'joyful wisdom.' He is the Ishmael of American higher education's great quest for excellence: he has seen it all, its glories and shames, its triumphs and defeats, its ironies, tragedies, and paradoxes-and he has survived to tell us the tale. He is the best commentator on college and university life since Clark Kerr. And he weaves the threads of his own life and his own struggles into the great tapestry of institutions. His story takes us beyond the roles he has played-student, professor, dean, president-into the life he has lived in these institutions. It has been a good life but not an easy one. And out of it he has drawn thoughtful lessons for
