On May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard opened fire on students at Kent State University (KSU), killing four and wounding nine. Although this event marked a watershed moment in American culture and the start of a decline in activism related to the war in Vietnam, its place in higher education history is not well-understood. This paper traces the…

This dissertation surveys the development of the Hawaiian higher educational system in the 19th century Hawaiian Kingdom as a strategy of Hawaiian leadership in promoting and protecting Hawaiian independence. This analysis revisits a Hawaiian educational history canon that overwhelmingly credits missionaries and foreigners as imposing an…

In this study on educational change in Pennsylvania from 1790 to 1838, I reexamine the history of how the state established its common school system, the predecessor to the state's public school system. In doing so, I identify a series of three leaders, argue that poverty was the primary catalyst for educational reform, and explain the nature of…

Although Asa Packer enjoyed much success in his life, both in terms of being an entrepreneur as well as a politician, not much is readily known about his politics and his views about government in general. By examining his life and various aspects of his career, this research effort is an attempt to highlight key events in his life to better…

In the 3 years prior to Harry Truman's establishment of the President's Commission on Higher Education in 1946, the Association of American Colleges (AAC), the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), and Harvard University all released reports on the relationship of general or liberal education to the political order. This historiographical…

A deeper understanding of how slavery and colonialism fundamentally shaped the system of higher education in the United States has led colleges and universities to reexamine their histories and acknowledge harms committed and the need for repair. Campuses are experimenting with how to address racial justice and healing for faculty, staff, and…

This dissertation delves into the profound impact of the Second Great Awakening on American higher education and its enduring social consequences. Examining the period from the late eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century, the research uncovers the core belief that drove the Awakening--that America and its citizens were chosen for a…

This article examines the Asian diaspora experience from historical exclusion to the production of oppositional and alternative knowledges that count in education. The first section critically examines historical and contemporary discourses across disciplines on the construction of identity such as who is considered an Asian and Asian American,…

Over the past several decades, higher education in the United States has been shaped by marketization and privatization. Efforts to critique these developments often rely on a contrast between a bleak present and a romanticized past. In "Unsettling the University," Sharon Stein offers a different entry point--one informed by decolonial…

This paper investigates the historical context, internal content, and educational significance of Higher Arithmetic, a 1919 mathematics text by David Eugene Smith and George Wentworth, which has been insufficiently studied. Through historical and content analysis, this study reveals the authors' intention to provide a review and extension of…

Maria Montessori's visit to California in 1915--her second visit to the United States--coincided with multiple events in the region: San Francisco's Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE), San Diego's Panama-California Exposition (PCE), and the National Education Association of the United States (NEA) annual meeting in Oakland. Her visit…

Following the American Civil War, several school music series were published to serve the needs of graded schools. These gradually became more popular than the single-volume songbooks previously used in public schools. Yet, school songbooks by Ransom Hubbard Randall and other authors continued to be used in the public schools as late as the 1920s.…

The author argues that, in the early 1920s, many urban White Americans saw in the Arctic an escape from a world of rapidly expanding technology and became captivated by images of Inuit communities. To pass down an antimodernist form of imperialism to children of the period, educators used lead ethnographic "Escimo" figurines, which…

This essay offers a review of the ways that North American historians have approached the history of epidemics in education to date and it identifies a few key historiographical trends and research questions raised by American and Canadian work. The history of epidemics in education is located at the intersection of three vibrant fields of study:…

The Morrill Act of 1862 provided the funding mechanism for the modern land-grant college system. In the over 160 years since its passage, the tripartite land-grant mission of teaching, research, and service has become the most recognizable legacy of the legislation. Recent scholars of land-grant education caution against viewing the history of…