Scholarly Leadership in Higher Education: An Intellectual History of James Bryant Conant

Urban provides an intellectual history of Harvard presidency of James Bryant Conant (1933-1953), situating
it within the broader international landscape and drawing out the implication
for the current state of higher education with reference to specific
leadership policy issues in the sector. Throughout this volume, Urban
explores the ways in which Conant achieved largely successful attempts to
modernize Harvard by upgrading both its student body and its faculty. He
explores the intellectual excellence agenda that Conant pursued both with
students and academics, and the ramifications of this. He also considers the
nature of Conant’s part-time handling of the role of president, the way he
delegated campus control to his Provost, Paul Buck, and the ways the two
operated together and separately. Urban also looks at Conant’s own
intellectual breadth, as scientist and humanist, which showed itself
prominently in his activities in pursuit of general education reform. Conant’s combination of intellect and
agenda was unusual for a president in his own time, and is exceedingly rare,
if not completely missing, in contemporary university presidencies. In
exploring this innovative president’s time in office at Harvard, Urban offers
pertinent ideas to today’s leaders of higher education.