Presidential leadership: navigating climate and challenges -- The hunt for dollars: appealing to constituents and critics -- Presidential engagements and entanglements: the university tackles the wider world -- Inheriting the wind: institutional stories and the shoulders of predecessors -- The contest for the middle: can the center hold? -- The dilemmas of diversity -- Political rightness and ideology: the battleground in and around the academy's walls -- The courage to hold the center: balancing convictions and passionate intensity -- Presidential imprints: (...) securing the academic core from threats within and without -- Life in the bully pulpit: choices and dilemmas -- The present and the future: presidential prospects -- The presidential post: inside the job -- The future presidency: guardian of the soul of the university. (shrink)

Is the college presidency merely a position in which one manages bureaucracies, garners wealth, and mediates ideological battles?

This book presents the issues, controversies, and key players that formed and enabled the American college and university to endure as a critical institution of the nation and society.