100 Semesters: My Adventures as Student, Professor, and University President, and What I Learned along the Way (review)

At a time when the postsecondary education universe has expanded well beyond its patrician roots, there is a risk in attempting to say something interesting and insightful about higher education through a memoir, especially if one writes from the perspective of a former student, professor, and president of a handful of the most elite institutions in the United States. William M. Chace traces 50 years of higher education through his time at Haverford College, the University of California—Berkeley, Stillman College, and Stanford, Wesleyan (Connecticut), and Emory universities. All save Stillman are highly selective in admissions, compete for faculty "stars," and rely on substantial endowments, clinical revenue from medical school operations, or both. In short, Chace's "adventures" at these institutions are hardly representative of the world of higher education today—or, for the most part, the last 50 years.

Yet there is much to learn from this book and much that Chace can tell us about who we are in higher education, along with reminding us who we are not. Tracing 100 semesters—50 years—as a student, professor, and university president, Chace raises key issues and themes in U.S. higher education from the mid-1950s to 2006.

Chace unflinchingly relates the story of being suspended indefinitely from Haverford for an infraction (stealing silverware from the dining hall) that today would likely merit a much less serious sanction at most institutions. From this incident, its redemptive aftermath, and Chace's eventual return to the college to complete his bachelor's degree, readers can see one source of his lifelong commitment to student development—although he does not label it as such. He reminds us what higher education, at its best, can be: a place where mistakes can be made and redemption can be had, especially if there are "adults" on the scene committed to holistic learning and development.

Another lesson that becomes a theme through the book is the emerging significance of diversity in gender, race, social class, and sexual orientation in higher education since the mid-1950s. Chace began his career in higher education as a student at an all-White, all-male, liberal arts college and experienced first-hand key moments in the diversification of higher education. As a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, he took time away from his graduate program at Berkeley to teach the 1963–1964 academic year at Stillman College, a historically Black college in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He marched with students and was arrested in a demonstration. He returned to Berkeley to witness gender and sexual revolutions on campus and nearby, then took a professorship at Stanford where the pains of growing diversity were sharply demonstrated on a regular basis.

His presidency at Wesleyan was marked by divestiture of endowment monies from companies doing business in South Africa. Chace also documents his growing awareness of social class issues in elite institutions brought on in part by his decision to end need-blind admissions in a successful effort to make Wesleyan's budget practices sustainable. At Emory, he both increased racial diversity and ushered in a new era of sexual orientation nondiscrimination policy and practice; the first same-sex union held in Emory's chapel was a result of Chace's understanding of fairness and interpretation of the nondiscrimination policy he persuaded the trustees to adopt. The memoir, then, serves as an overview of the changing student body and touches on several key areas of policy and practice in this regard.

A third area from which we can learn about higher education is Chace's clear commitment to the central enterprise of teaching. Throughout the text, he returns to this theme, whether observing his undergraduate and graduate faculty, describing the development of his own teaching (about which he is unflinching in his criticisms and modest in his praise), or asserting from the presidential...