City on the Hill

The struggle for a Dutch-language university in Leuven not only brought an end to the era of a bilingual, unitary university. In 1968 a regime of authoritarian priests and status-conscious professors was also dispatched for ever. In the euphoria of its new-found autonomy the University opted for forward flight: in a reaction against the forces of conservatism it presented itself as a young, dynamic institution, populated by career professors and students who were set to storm the barricades of traditionalism. This book tells a story of contestation, but also of professionalisation, of ever more specialised scholarship and its research triumphs, of unflagging engagement with rigorous academic goals and international horizons. It is the story of an ambitious enterprise.