Book Summary
Impostors in the Temple is a hard-hitting, eye-opening book about the decaying moral and intellectual state of American universities and colleges today--about why things have gone so wrong, and what we can do to set them right. The university is the intellectual engine of America. It is here future leaders are trained, national policy is framed, and standards for our huge educational infrastructure are established. Yet today, despite the staggering costs of a college education, our institutions are not making the grade. The fault lies not with the students, who are brighter than ever, but with the faculties, administrations, and trustees into whose hands we deliver our best young minds. Martin Anderson--domestic policy adviser to two presidents and himself a member of the academic establishment for over three decades--takes American academics to task in this stirring book, sure to be hailed for its scope and clarity.
Cutting through political excuses that have gone awry, Anderson addresses the simpler, unuttered truths: how irrelevant the work of our intellectuals has become; how corrupt practices are rampant in our universities; how academic elitism has destroyed academic integrity; how too many of our professors are not qualified to teach; how too often it is not professors but students who are relegated to do the teaching; how trustees and administrators are shunning responsibility and looking the other way; and how, by accepting the status quo, Americans are mortgaging their children's educational futures. In clear, vivid prose, Anderson names names, marshals statistics, turns conventional wisdom on its ear, and makes us understand how serious things have become. More important, he offers us dramatic solutions.
As provocative as Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind and Dinesh D'Souza's Illiberal Education, Martin Anderson's Impostors in the Temple is sure to raise hackles, spur debate, and fire our imaginations on how to revitalize an American community that processes millions of our young at so steep a cost.
