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Ivory Towers and Nationalist Minds: Universities, Leadership, and the Development of the American State. By Mark R. Nemec. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006. x, 301 pp. Cloth, $70.00, ISBN 0-472-09912-4. Paper, $24.95, ISBN 0-472-06912-8.)
What did the emergence and development of the great American universities contribute to the life of the nation? Their leadership in shaping higher education and advancing American science, as well as their supporting role in building a capitalist economy, are well established. This study by Mark R. Nemec would add an additional role, that of making crucial contributions to the development of the American state. His argument extends the writings of political scientists who have interpreted the period from 1870 to 1920 as formative for the ideas, institutions, and authority of the "new American state" (pp. 3-4). From that perspective, universities become significant actors, but in ways that seem largely indirect.
Nemec...