Description: In order to survive, the university would have to institutionalize a new order of knowledge, one that was self-organizing, internally coherent, and embodied in the very character of the modern, critical scholar.
Brief description: Chad Wellmon is a professor of German at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Organizing Enlightenment: Information Overload and the Invention of the Modern Research University and Permanent Crisis: The Humanities in a Disenchanted Age.
Review Quotes: The original analysis of select texts and the general élan with which the book is written nevertheless render Organizing Enlightenment an invaluable item for anyone reflecting on the current sense of crisis in academia. Tracing the invention of an idea of the research university rather than the genesis of the institution itself, this book is a welcome contribution to controversies over information overload and the control of knowledge.
--Erudition and the Republic of Letters