Abstract
The 150th anniversary of the 1862 Morrill Act obviously and justifiably leads to praise for the “A&M” legacy of the land grant colleges as part of American social and educational history. Beyond and beneath the celebration, Scott Gelber’s The Univer- sity and the People provides a compelling reminder that this was no easy accomplishment. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the state land grant colleges were central to contentious, often bitter, political struggles with nationwide consequences. Gelber’s historical study of politics and higher education in the South and Midwest, with intensive case studies of Kansas, Nebraska, and North Carolina, indicates that the new state land grant institutions were both a means and an end in the Populists’ battles for control of state governments.
A recurrent theme across Gelber’s fascinating institutional and state case studies is that Populism as a political and educational movement carried with it the peculiar characteristics of agrarianism as an ideal and as a platform. The Populist leaders were decidedly against elites—namely, the established elites as represented by college-educated fops and snobs from the cities who controlled the state houses, banks, and corporations. Yet the egalitarian emphasis of the Populists was not a universal reform because they hardly shared wealth or power with all other disenfranchised groups in American life.
Populism was foremost an agrarian constituency and advocacy. This shaped its influence on state colleges and was often effective in making admissions criteria, curricular offerings, and educational priorities accessible and egalitarian—up to a point and only in a decidedly partisan way. Why the hedge? It’s because Populism included its own exclusionist impulses—namely, in areas of race, religion, ethnicity, geography, and gender. Populism as a determinant of state colleges’ curricula and composition represented dramatic gains—if you were White, rural, male, and involved in agriculture. There was little room for Blacks, immigrants, and city dwellers. Women settled for partial inclusion but, once again, only if they fulfilled other Populist criteria and were acquiescent with a marginal role. Illustrative of the separatist character of the era was the second Morrill Act, in 1890, that did extend the land grant mission to African Ameri- cans, but largely through the separate- but-unequal terms that extended funding to the historically Black land grant colleges in deference to the laws in 17 states, ranging from Delaware to Texas, that prohibited public coeducation of the races.
And that is the paradox and puzzle that continually shapes Populism as a part of Progressivism. By the standards of social justice and civil rights familiar to us in the 21st century, the Populists’ organized efforts to assure a place for agrarianism in public higher education in the late 19th century makes sense—but only as one of many partisan initiatives. One hallmark of good research is that it raises questions. By this standard, Gelber succeeds. As one reads his accounts of the debates and campaigns to control public colleges and universities, the question that surfaces is “Was Populism as part of higher education ultimately self-defeating?” In other words, were the Populist successes to create and control state land grant colleges dysfunctional to their professed Populist values? Gelber documents time and time again that many students from farming backgrounds who gained entry to the state college had little interest in studying agriculture or returning to the farm. Often as not, the A&M college provided an avenue to managerial careers, law school, teaching, judgeships—just about anything was preferable to farming.
Within several states, the Populist movement, led by public figures who often straddled the line between being politicians and being educators, managed to gain unprecedented state appropriations for public higher education. Furthermore, these initiatives carried over into the national scene. Gelber provides ample, readable coverage of one of the most impressive legacies of the Populist movement—namely, a viable lobbying office in Washington, D.C. This was due in large measure to the effective role of Pennsylvania State College President George W. Atherton, who persuaded presidents of the disparate land grant colleges to mobilize to form an enduring collective presence in Washington, D.C. This was a major accomplishment, as the resultant Association of American Agricultural Col- leges and Experiment Stations (AAACES) triumphed as the major recipient of federal funding in all of higher education nationwide until after World War II.
Why read and review this book for members of the American Educational Research Association? First, Gelber shows that history does matter—and that the tensions pitting rural constituencies against urban constituencies persist today. Consider, for example, that in 1981 the University of Maryland reviewed its A&M legacy and concluded that its future was henceforth as the “Post Land Grant University.” But in more recent years, numerous state universities have invoked the “land grant mission”—often as a dubious historical license to legitimize just about any activity the university president and trustees wish to pursue. Today, the rural question resurfaces in the strategic decision of Cornell University to supplement its historic Ithaca campus in rural upstate New York with a brand new science campus in the heart of New York City. It continues in the fluid readaptation of the A&M institutions in the late 20th century, as symbolized by their new organizational abbreviation of APLU—short for the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities. Gelber’s concluding chapter, indeed, effectively connects past and present, with explicit analysis of connections between the late 19th-century events and their residual variations into the early 21st century.
Gelber’s new book also represents a new generation of scholars and scholarship that continues a vital tradition within education research writ large—namely, the ability of historians of education to provide context about significant issues in American education. This is an invaluable contribution for all disciplines engaged in the study of education. What Gelber and his fellow historians of education may lack in federal grant funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, or the Institute of Education Sciences, they make up in substance, thorough archival research, and clear writing on enduring themes. This is good news for all AERA members.