Jaroslav Pelikan is Sterling Professor of History at Yale University. He is the author of, among other books, The Christian Tradition and Jesus Through the Centuries. His scholarly accomplishments have been recognized by medals and awards from many scholarly societies and institutions, by honorary degrees from universities all over the world, and by the Jefferson Award of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the highest honor conferred by the Federal Government on a scholar in the Humanities.
Pelikan ( The Christian Tradition ), professor of history at Yale, here conducts an ``ongoing dialogue with one book,'' John Henry Cardinal Newman's The Idea of a University . Written more than 150 years ago by the towering 19th century thinker whose efforts to establish a Catholic university in Dublin were cruelly frustrated, Newman's book offers illuminating parallels to, and contrasts, current university crises, and Pelikan draws attention to these in the present work. He adheres to the format of Newman's discourses, embracing their theological as well as scholarly dimensions as he seeks to characterize the university's aims, functions, and place in society. He considers the interrelations of knowledge and utility, the conflict between ideology and pluralism and the need for community felt by teachers and students--concerns as pressing in Newman's day as they are now. Shaped by Pelikan's personal identification with Newman, whom he calls ``the most influential English-speaking theologian who ever lived,'' this reflective book should be required reading for shapers of the university, and will be a powerful stimulus for readers who wish to reacquaint themselves with Newman. (May)
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