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Southern Universities: Are They Rising?

Writing an institutional history for anyone of the ten to twenty major universities in the United States poses little problem. Historians of Johns Hopkins, Harvard, or Wisconsin need only chronicle the success of a dynamic president, the intellectual accomplishments of the faculty, or the path-breaking introduction of new disciplines or schools. Leadership and accomplishment are the natural themes. But how does the historian approach the history of a university that he or she believes has not been a national leader, has not been distinguished by a brilliant faculty, or has not established a model of public service for others to emulate? In other words, how does one write the history of a university that has been less than great for most if not all of its existence? The authors of several recent histories of well-known universities in the South, specifically Georgia, Tennessee, and Vanderbilt, have struggled with this very dilemma. One approach could be the "sacrifice and devotion" theme. If the university was not a leader, at least devoted faculty and students kept the institution alive and endeared it to its constituents. This is not the path the authors under review take. Instead, each chooses to set a norm for an academically excellent institution and then show how his university missed the mark. The histories are as much accounts of what the universities were not as of what they were. The volumes on Tennessee and Georgia almost compete to show which state university was the least well supported or most investigated by an anti-intellectual legislature.