About the Author

Christopher Newfield is Professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Reviews

It is not every day that you get a meticulous analysis of higher education budgetary mechanisms within the same covers as reflections on Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". And the sheer generosity of spirit that underlies Newfield's rather depressing reflections is deeply attractive.--Alan Ryan"Times Higher Education Supplement" (09/18/2008)

It is not often that even a first-rate scholar and writer manages to delve so deeply into a core problem of his society and time as to come out with an understanding of it that is so complete, so profound--indeed revelatory--as to illuminate the public muddled mind and open the way to recovery. This is what Christopher Newfield has achieved in his book, "Unmaking the Public University." The problem in focus is the decline of the American public university...Newfield's thesis is that this decline has been orchestrated by the American Right who, in the 1970s, got frightened by the democratizing influence higher public education was exerting on the American society. Conservative elites felt threatened by the post-World War II rise of a college-educated economic majority--a mass middle class--and started an assault against it. The Right did not dare to openly attack the economic position of the middle class. Instead, they waged culture wars against it.--Emilia Ilieva"Daily Nation" (05/30/2