In Catholic Higher Education in the 1960s: Issues of Identity, Issues of Governance, Anthony J. Dosen, C.M. provides a behind-the-scenes look at how six different Catholic colleges and universities approached questions about governance and Catholic identity at a pivotal time of American Catholic higher education. In so doing, he demonstrates both the variety that is a hallmark of Catholic higher education and the essential role that presidents play in shaping the Catholic character and culture of their institutions. A significant shift in governance took place in Catholic colleges and universities around the time of the Second Vatican Council. At the same time, secularizing trends and concerns about how Catholic colleges and universities should understand and sustain their Catholic identity also began to surface. This led to the unfortunate belief by some that laicization and secularization were linked in a cause and effect relationship. Dosen clearly shows that is not the case. Rather, he demonstrates that broader cultural realities, institutional attitudes, cultures, histories, and strong presidential leadership combined to shape how Catholic colleges and universities structured governance and understood the dynamics and dimensions of Catholic identity. The general pattern of laicization and secularization that is readily apparent across Catholic higher education masks a much richer and more complex reality that helps explain why there is, to this day, no one model of how to be a Catholic college or university. "The US Catholic culture wars have polarized opinion on the Catholicity of Catholic colleges and universities. Dosen's book offers a welcome careful analysis of just how six Catholic colleges and universities navigated the identity storms of the 1960s. Those who take the time to read this book will find that sweeping generalizations about what happened then are simply wrong."---Fr. James Heft, S.M. University of Southern California President of the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies
Catholic Higher Education in the 1960s is a series of cases that describes and analyzes the transitions made by representative Catholic institutions in their attempts to update their governance structures and maintain their Catholic identity in the midst of the post-Vatican II era. This book will be of interest to historians of education and Catholic education; to administrators and faculty in Catholic schools and in other religious-based institutions that seek to understand the dynamic of balancing their religious identity with their attempts at “reading the signs of the times.”
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