Killing the Spirit

To the continuing debate about the ills of American higher education, Smith, founding provost of UC Santa Cruz, contributes probing, provocative insights. With a tribute to his undergraduate mentor, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Harvard social philosophy professor and often disparaged radical thinker, the author sets about ``mapping the desert'' of contemporary higher education. After a lucid traverse of the development of education in the U.S., he sums up its present state as ``Academic fundamentalism. . . the stubborn refusal of the academy to acknowledge any truth that does not conform to professorial dogmas.'' In Smith's view, a meld of the classical Christian traditions with secular democracy may restore the modern university as a true ``academic community.'' 30,000 first printing; author tour. (Mar.)