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To “Administer the Present”

Clark Kerr and the Purpose of the Postwar American Research University

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Ethan Schrum
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Abstract

This article explores the intellectual and institutional contexts of the seminal ideas about the American research university expressed in Clark Kerr’s book The Uses of the University (1963). In particular, it suggests how Kerr’s relationship to the administrative science movement, an important thread of postwar American social science, shaped his concept of the university. It focuses special attention on an important yet little-known 1957 speech in which Kerr suggested that the university’s purpose was increasingly to “administer the present.” The article concludes by showing how the development of the University of California’s new campus at Irvine in the 1960s reflected his ideas about relating social science theory to administering the present.

Type
Special Section: The Uses of the University: After Fifty Years
Information
Social Science History , Volume 36 , Issue 4 , Winter 2012 , pp. 499 - 523
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2012 

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