Hugh Davis Graham – författare

Some call him the ""great communicator"" and many even credit him with ending the Cold War. Others even consider him the greatest president since Roosevelt. Ronald Reagan claimed several distinctions as 40th president, but he will be most remembered by admirers and critics alike for his lasting conservative legacy. This comprehensive and archivally grounded assessment of the Reagan presidency offers balanced ""second generation"" evaluations of the ideas and policies that made up the so-called ""Reagan revolution"". Drawing on previously unavailable records, 17 scholars from history, political science and economics focus on important areas of national policy during the Reagan administration. James T. Patterson, Hugh Heclo, David M. O'Brien and others look closely at Reagan's ideas and rhetoric, foreign policies, economic agenda and social policies, building a foundation for future interpretations of the Reagan years. In tackling this legacy, these contributors do not necessarily agree on what it is and while there is consensus regarding Reagan's ideas, personality and leadership, there is both doubt and debate about actual achievements. In chapters covering such topics as national security, taxation, environmental policy, immigration reform, and federal judgeships, the authors tend to see his accomplishments as less dramatic than ""first generation"" proponents have maintained - that there was actually no ""Reagan revolution"". Nevertheless, they also agree that his administration accomplished much of its mission in foreign policy and domestic economic policy - success attributed to his conservative idealism and pragmatic politics - and had a lasting effect on the transformation of American conservatism. While less successful in advancing the social agenda of the ""New Right"", Reagan nevertheless shaped politics and policy in ways that extended beyond the years of his administration. Whether or not Reagan changed America and the world as much as Roosevelt did remains in dispute, but this volume aims to advance our understanding of his presidency and allow us to better assess its accomplishments and legacy.

Before the Second World War, few universities in the United States had earned high respect among the international community of scholars and scientists. Since 1945, however, the distinctive attributes of American higher education-decentralized administration, pluralistic and research-minded faculties, and intense competition for government funding-have become world standard. Whether measured by Nobel and other prizes, international applications for student admissions and faculty appointments, or the results of academic surveys, America's top research universities are the best in the world. The Rise of American Research Universities provides a fresh historical interpretation of their ascendancy and a fresh, comprehensive estimate of their scholarly achievement. Hugh Davis Graham and Nancy Diamond question traditional methods of rating the reputation and performance of universities; they offer instead an empirical analysis of faculty productivity based on research grants received, published research, and peer approval of that work.Comparing the research achievements of faculty at more than 200 institutions, they differ with most studies of higher education in measuring performance in every academic field-from medicine to humanities-and in analyzing data on research activity in terms of institutional size. In this important and timely work, Graham and Diamond reassess the success of American universities as research institutions and the role of public funding in their developmentfrom the expansionist "golden years" of the 1950s and '60s, through the austerity measures of the 1970s and the entrepreneurial ethos of the 1980s, to the budget crises universities face in the 1990s.

Using the Kennedy and Johnson archives to analyze the evolution of educational policy from the perspective of the executive branch, Graham finds that the central theme was executive planning through presidential task forces. Mission agencies, clientele groups, and congressional committees produced a cascade of education programs in the 1960s as the administration was collapsing under the weight of the Vietnam war, inflation, and collective violence, yet the last two decades have witnessed a decline in test scores and basic literacy.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.