In the past decade, criticism of the state of undergraduate education in America has come from many directions and in many and various forms, from Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, to Dinesh D'Souza's Illiberal Education, to Secretary of Education William J. Bennett's 1984 report To Reclaim a Legacy. In his book Tenured Radicals, Roger Kimball derided current instruction in the humanities as "a program of study that has nothing to offer...but ideological posturing, pop culture, and hermeneutic word games." And given the intense demands of global competition, others have wondered if liberal arts programs in general should be replaced by more practical, job-oriented courses of study. Has the age-old tradition of education in the liberal arts been betrayed in our lifetime? Is it destined to become a stale vestige of the past? What value can be attributed to it in an era of rapidly escalating change? In Community of Learning, Francis Oakley, the president of Williams College, makes a strong case for the values and achievements of the liberal arts in providing a sense of historical continuity and a broader framework in which to come to terms with the problems of the modern world. Noting the "dyspeptic presentism" and "disheveled anecdotalism" characteristic of a good deal of the recent criticism, Oakley attempts to place it in historical perspective. He asserts that the single most important factor shaping the American undergraduate experience today is the unparalleled demographic upheaval of the past thirty years, the nature of the response it evoked, and the energy, imagination, and adaptation going into that response. And, reaching back to a more distant past, he insists that the tradition of education in the liberal arts has always been a highly tension-ridden one and that from its very conflictedness has derived much of its enduring vitality. Weaving together historical perspective and recent statistical data, he evaluates current worries about a "flight from the humanities" on the part of students or from teaching on the part of academics, and addresses such hotly debated issues as curricular coherence, multiculturalism, and the alleged politicization of undergraduate studies. Coming at a time when the age-old tradition of education in the liberal arts is beset by anxious questioning, Community of Learning is a bold affirmation of its established strengths and current efficacy in helping provide students with a grasp of the past, a comprehension of the present, a sense of self, and an enhanced ability to cope with the complex demands of an era of unprecedented change.

Community of Learning: The American College and the Liberal Arts Tradition

Medical Books

Oakley, Francis

Dentistry

Oxford University Press

This book is about the fundamental constitution of the Catholic Church. In 1870 the First Vatican Council vindicated the old Roman vision of an essentially unlimited monarchical authority residing in the pope. That vision had competed for the allegiance of Catholics worldwide with an even older, conciliar, essentially constitutionalist ideal of church governance. Francis Oakley here reconstructs the half-millennial history of that rival and now largely forgotten tradition.

The Conciliarist Tradition: Constitutionalism in the Catholic Church 1300-1870

History

Europe

In the early fifteenth century, the general council assembled at Constance and, representing the universal Church, put an end to the scandalous schism which for almost forty years had divided the Latin Church between rival lines of claimants to the papal office. It did so by claiming and exercising an authority superior to that of the pope, an authority by virtue of which it could impose constitutional limits on the exercise of his prerogatives, stand in judgment over him, and if need be, depose him for wrongdoing. In so acting the council gave historic expression to a tradition of conciliarist constitutionalism which long competed for the allegiance of Catholics worldwide with the high papalist monarchical vision that was destined to triumph in 1870 at Vatican I and to become identified with Roman Catholic orthodoxy itself. This book sets out to reconstruct the half-millennial history of that vanquished rival tradition.

The Crisis of Authority in Catholic Modernity

One deep problem facing the Catholic church is the question of how its teaching authority is understood today. It is fairly clear that, while Rome continues to teach as if its authority were unchanged from the days before Vatican II (1962-65), the majority of Catholics - within the first-world church, at least - take a far more independent line, and increasingly understand themselves (rather than the church) as the final arbiters of decision-making, especially on ethical questions. This collection of essays explores the historical background and present ecclesial situation, explaining the dramatic shift in attitude on the part of contemporary Catholics in the U.S. and Europe. The overall purpose is neither to justify nor to repudiate the authority of the church's hierarchy, but to cast some light on: the context within which it operates, the complexities and ambiguities of the historical tradition of belief and behavior it speaks for, and the kinds of limits it confronts - consciously or otherwise. The authors do not hope to fix problems, although some of the essays make suggestions, but to contribute to a badly needed intra-Catholic dialogue without which, they believe, problems will continue to fester and solutions will remain elusive.

Religion & Spirituality

Lacey, Michael J.

Christian Books & Bibles

One deep problem facing the Catholic church is the question of how its teaching authority is understood today. It is fairly clear that, while Rome continues to teach as if its authority were unchanged from the days before Vatican II (1962-65), the majority of Catholics - within the first-world church, at least - take a far more independent line, and increasingly understand themselves (rather than the church) as the final arbiters of decision-making, especially on ethical questions. This collection of essays explores the historical background and present ecclesial situation, explaining the dramatic shift in attitude on the part of contemporary Catholics in the U.S. and Europe. The overall purpose is neither to justify nor to repudiate the authority of the church's hierarchy, but to cast some light on: the context within which it operates, the complexities and ambiguities of the historical tradition of belief and behavior it speaks for, and the kinds of limits it confronts - consciously or otherwise. The authors do not hope to fix problems, although some of the essays make suggestions, but to contribute to a badly needed intra-Catholic dialogue without which, they believe, problems will continue to fester and solutions will remain elusive.

From the Cast-Iron Shore: In Lifelong Pursuit of Liberal Learning

From the Cast-Iron Shore is part personal memoir and part participant-observer's educational history. As president emeritus at Williams College in Massachusetts, Francis Oakley details its progression from a fraternity-dominated institution in the 1950s to the leading liberal arts college it is today, as ranked by U.S. News and World Report. Oakley's own life frames this transformation. He talks of growing up in England, Ireland, and Canada, and his time as a soldier in the British Army, followed by his years as a student at Yale University. As an adult, Oakley's provocative writings on church authority stimulated controversy among Catholic scholars in the years after Vatican II. A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Medieval Academy of America, and an Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he has written extensively on medieval intellectual and religious life and on American higher education. Oakley combines this account of his life with reflections on social class, the relationship between teaching and research, the shape of American higher education, and the challenge of educational leadership in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. The book is an account of the life of a scholar who has made a deep impact on his historical field, his institution, his nation, and his church, and will be of significant appeal to administrators of liberal arts colleges and universities, historians, medievalists, classicists, and British and American academics.

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

University of Notre Dame Press

From the Cast-Iron Shore is part personal memoir and part participant-observer’s educational history. As president emeritus at Williams College in Massachusetts, Francis Oakley details its progression from a fraternity-dominated institution in the 1950s to the leading liberal arts college it is today, as ranked by U.S. News and World Report. Oakley’s own life frames this transformation. He talks of growing up in England, Ireland, and Canada, and his time as a soldier in the British Army, followed by his years as a student at Yale University. As an adult, Oakley’s provocative writings on church authority stimulated controversy among Catholic scholars in the years after Vatican II. A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Medieval Academy of America, and an Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he has written extensively on medieval intellectual and religious life and on American higher education.
 Oakley combines this account of his life with reflections on social class, the relationship between teaching and research, the shape of American higher education, and the challenge of educational leadership in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. The book is an account of the life of a scholar who has made a deep impact on his historical field, his institution, his nation, and his church, and will be of significant appeal to administrators of liberal arts colleges and universities, historians, medievalists, classicists, and British and American academics.

In this book—the first volume in his groundbreaking trilogy on the emergence of western political thought—Francis Oakley explores the roots of secular political thinking by examining the political ideology and institutions of Hellenistic and late Roman antiquity and of the early European middle ages. By challenging the popular belief that the ancient Greek and Roman worlds provided the origins of our inherently secular politics, Oakley revises our understanding of the history of political theory in a fundamental and far-reaching manner that will reverberate for decades. This book lays the foundations for Oakley's next two volumes, which will develop his argument that it is in the Latin middle ages that we must seek the ideological roots of modern political secularism.

Empty Bottles of Gentilism: Kingship and the Divine in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (to 1050) (Emergence of Western Political Thought in the Latin Middle Ages) (Volume 1)

Ancient Civilizations

Yale University Press

Francis Oakley continues his magisterial three-part history of the emergence of Western political thought during the Middle Ages with this second volume in the series. Here, Oakley explores kingship from the tenth century to the beginning of the fourteenth, showing how, under the stresses of religious and cultural development, kingship became an inceasingly secular institution.
“A masterpiece and the central part of a trilogy that will be a true masterwork.”—Jeffrey Burton Russell, University of California, Santa Barbara

Mortgage of the Past: Reshaping the Ancient Political Inheritance (1050-1300) (The Emergence of Western Political Thought in the Latin Middle Ages) (Volume 2)

The concluding volume of Francis Oakley's authoritative trilogy moves on to engage the political thinkers of the later Middle Ages, Renaissance, Age of Reformation and religious wars, and the era that produced the Divine Right Theory of Kingship. Oakley's ground-breaking study probes the continuities and discontinuities between medieval and early modern modes of political thinking and dwells at length on the roots and nature of those contract theories that sought to legitimate political authority by grounding it in the consent of the governed.

Watershed of Modern Politics: Law, Virtue, Kingship, and Consent (1300-1650) (Emergence of Western Political Thought in the Latin Middle A)

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Oakley, Francis. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Oakley, Francis

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Oakley, Francis. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Community of Learning: The American College and the Liberal Arts Tradition

The Conciliarist Tradition: Constitutionalism in the Catholic Church 1300-1870

The Conciliarist Tradition: Constitutionalism in the Catholic Church 1300-1870

The Crisis of Authority in Catholic Modernity

The Crisis of Authority in Catholic Modernity

From the Cast-Iron Shore: In Lifelong Pursuit of Liberal Learning

From the Cast-Iron Shore: In Lifelong Pursuit of Liberal Learning

Empty Bottles of Gentilism: Kingship and the Divine in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (to 1050) (Emergence of Western Political Thought in the Latin Middle Ages) (Volume 1)

Mortgage of the Past: Reshaping the Ancient Political Inheritance (1050-1300) (The Emergence of Western Political Thought in the Latin Middle Ages) (Volume 2)

Watershed of Modern Politics: Law, Virtue, Kingship, and Consent (1300-1650) (Emergence of Western Political Thought in the Latin Middle A)