The Development Of U.S. Higher Education Policy And Its Impact On The Gender Dynamics Of American Citizenship

Treating federal higher education policy as an indispensable component of the American welfare state, this dissertation examines how it has influenced the gender dynamics of American citizenship since the mid-twentieth century. In recent decades, the U.S. has seen both a striking increase in women's higher educational attainment and a narrowing of the gender gap in political engagement. I examine how landmark higher education policies have affected these outcomes, analyzing the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) of 1958, the Higher Education Act (HEA) of 1965, and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. Using qualitative analysis of historical documents and archival resources, including legislative statutes, Congressional Record transcripts, and oral history interview materials, I examine how these ground-breaking social policies were fashioned and probe how-in contrast to other landmark social welfare programs-they included women on equal terms with men. Then, I draw upon quantitative techniques, such as logistic and OLS regression, to explain how federal higher education policies have influenced the gender dynamics of social and political citizenship in the United States. This empirical analysis draws upon several datasets, including the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS) and the Higher Education Research Institute's Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) Freshman Survey. I find that by providing crucial resources and experiences, these policies have contributed to women's promotion to first-class citizenship in the United States, revolutionizing the way in which the state interacts with women and promoting gender equality in terms of social and political citizenship

A philosophy to fit “the character of this historical period”? Responses to Jean-Paul Sartre in some British and American philosophy departments, c. 1945 - 1970.

Anglophone philosophers are often associated with rejecting philosophy’s moral guidance function after 1945. This article builds on existing work on Jean-Paul Sartre’s reception in universities to show that, actually, many British and American philosophers embraced moral guidance roles by engaging with his work and that they promoted creativity and choice in society as a result. Sartre first came to philosophers’ attention in the context of post-war Francophilia, but interest in him quickly went beyond the fact that he was French and expanded to include the wider existentialist movement that he was a part of. Sartre had enduring popularity among English speaking philosophers because his philosophy resonated with the older British and American philosophies idealism and pragmatism that, like his, were inspired by Hegel. Sartre’s respondents also valued existentialism because, to them, it made certain Judeo-Christian principles relevant, thus protecting religion at a time when they believed it was threatened with decline, and by the advance of specialisation. Anglophone philosophers who were interested in Sartre spread their responses to him through teaching an expanding student population, but also reached the wider public through activism, journalism, broadcasting, and government advisory roles. In doing so, philosophers integrated existential ideas into several aspects of culture in post-war Britain and America