Hanna Holborn Gray, Harry Pratt Judson Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the Department of History and former president of the University, has published a memoir called An Academic Life.
"An Academic Life speaks to the fundamental issues of purpose, academic freedom, and governance that arise time and again in higher education, and that pose sharp challenges to the independence and scholarly integrity of each new generation" (Princeton University Press, publisher).
Professor Gray recently gave an email interview to Inside Higher Ed on her life, work, and the inspiration for the memoir. Among the questions was this gem:
Q: What parts of your tenure as president at Chicago do you consider your most significant accomplishments?
A: I hope that my main contribution to the University of Chicago -- and of course any accomplishment rests not on a single person but on the large contributions made by a large cohort of colleagues -- is to have brought some stability and clarity of direction to an institution that was highly vulnerable to the very serious problems that beset the university world at the time I took office, working to preserve and strengthen its central tradition and character while responding to a changing and difficult environment. That we could do so speaks to the power of a pervasive ethos that the University of Chicago possessed as its most important legacy: a sense of itself as a genuine university that valued above all the vigorous life of the mind wherever that led, a veneration for tough intellectual debate and accomplishment, and a belief in connecting the differing subjects and modes of the higher learning in innovative ways. It is a university built on nonconformity, and I like that especially.
Read the full text of the interview at Inside Higher Ed and pre-order the book from the Seminary Co-op.