The Forum and the Tower: How Scholars and Politicians Have Imagined the World, from Plato to Eleanor Roosevelt (review)

When I was a graduate student, I attended my first ASHE conference (in Miami that year) and was eager to visit sessions hosted by scholars whose books and articles I had spent the last couple of years reading. Toward the end of the second day, I wandered into what was labeled a “roundtable discussion” concerning the role of higher education research in policymaking decisions. I quickly learned that the primary focus of this standing-room-only session was the absence of this research in these decisions and what could be done to bridge that gap. The general consensus was that policymakers were talking to policymakers and higher education scholars were generally talking to higher education scholars. Unfortunately, rarely were the two meeting.

While efforts to bridge that gap have found some success, Mary Ann Glendon, the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard University Law School and former U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican, would argue that such gaps are not new. In fact, in The Forum and the Tower: How Scholars and Politicians Have Imagined the World, from Plato to Eleanor Roosevelt, she argues those gaps are as old as academe itself. Inspired by her own experiences and a desire to offer her students models of holding “theory and practice together with integrity,” Glendon concludes that such efforts are difficult at best as they cut across both the grain of societal expectations and personal identity (p.ix).

Echoing Cicero in her preface, Glendon posits that scholars often struggle with the inevitable recognition of the possible. In contrast, politicians often struggle to recognize something greater than the immediately accessible. In the end, “The optimal confluence of gifts, favorable conditions, and plain luck will always be elusive” (p. xii).

Glendon’s exceptional book is not an agent of despair cast against the best inclinations of public intellectuals with a heart for public service. In contrast, what she offers through 12 chronologically organized accounts is a healthy dose of well-grounded hope. As her subtitle establishes, these accounts run from the time of Plato to that of Eleanor Roosevelt. Each of these individuals was defined by what the ancient Greeks referred to as thymos and eros. In these particular cases, thymos refers to a spiritedness which empowered them to contribute to efforts to govern. Eros refers to a love for the things of the mind. No one individual possesses these qualities in equal measures. “The desire for recognition led some to pursue a life in the public forum. For others, the quest for knowledge became their central preoccupation” (p. 3). Despite the imperfect nature of this relationship, each one of these individuals contributes something of value to the understanding of the public intellectual Glendon develops.

Part of the value Glendon extracts from the lives of these individuals is that few found themselves in the vocations for which they believed they were best suited. Some originally believed they were called to the life of the mind while others believed they were called to public service. In the end, the legacies they left behind speak to contributions in areas these individuals would have thought unlikely. For example, Charles Malik, the ambassador to the United States from Lebanon, always yearned to return to his life as a professor of philosophy. However, he found that his diplomatic skills were highly valued, not only by his own country but also by the global community.

Through the accounts she offers, Glendon also recognizes that lives of service to both the forum and the tower are difficult at best. In particular, few scholars recognize just how challenging true change is when it comes to the political arena. While Glendon finds that all of the individuals she highlights embody some admirable qualities, these qualities often emerge through a host of challenging circumstances and even...