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Julie A. Reuben

Portrait of Julie Reuben

Faculty Info

Charles Warren Professor of the History of American Education

Degrees

Ph.D., Stanford University, (1990)

Areas of Expertise

Portrait of Julie Reuben

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Email

julie_reuben@gse.harvard.edu

Office

Gutman 421

Office Hours

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Faculty Coordinator

Rees Collier

Julie Reuben is the Charles Warren Professor of the History of American Education and the faculty director of the Phillips Brooks Center for Public Service and Engaged Scholarship at Harvard University. She is a historian of American Higher Education and the development of the modern research university, the re-orientation of American higher education to focus on strengthening democracy in the middle of the twentieth century, and the impact of student activism in the 1960s. She is interested in how the relation between higher education and society has changed over time and is concerned about how, over the past couple of decades, that relationship has become increasingly frayed. As higher education has become more focused on private purposes, the public has become increasingly distrustful of it. She writes about these contemporary issues in the Chronicle of Higher Education and other publications.

  • “The Other Gen Ed: Social Sciences, Curricular Innovation, and the Defense of Democracy in Mid-Twentieth Century American Higher Education,” History of Education Quarterly, vol. 64, no. 4 (November 2024).
  • “What is Indoctrination Anyway? Bringing Politics into the Classroom isn’t Necessarily Wrong,” Chronicle of Higher Education, February 20, 2024.
  • “Hypercompetition is Harming Higher Ed,” Chronicle of Higher Education, July 8, 2022.
  • “Virtue and the Modern American University,” in Cultivating Virtue in the University, eds. Jonathan Brandt, Edward Brooks, Michael Lamb, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press: 2022)
  • “Consorting with the Barbarians at the Gate: McGeorge Bundy, the Ford Foundation, and Student Activism in the late 1960s,” in Making of the American Century: Essays on Twentieth Century American Politics and Culture, ed. B. Schulman, (Oxford University Press, 2014).
  • "Challenging Neutrality: Sixties Activism and Debates over Political Advocacy in the American University,” in Professors and their Politics, eds. N.Gross and S. Simmons, (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014).
  • "The Limits of Freedom: Student Activism and Educational Reform at Berkeley in the 1960s," in 'There Is a Time': The Free Speech Movement, Mario Savio, and Social Protest in 1960s America (ed. by R. Cohen and R.E. Zelnick), (2002).
  • "Merit, Mission, and Minority Students: A History of Debates over Special Admissions Programs," in A Faithful Mirror: Reflections on the College Board and Education in America, The College Board Centennial History Project (ed. by M. Johanek), (2001).
  • The Making of the Modern University: Intellectual Transformation and the Marginalization of Morality, (University of Chicago Press, 1996).

  • Fellow, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (2005)
  • Choice Outstanding Academic Book Award for Making of the Modern University (1997)
  • National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship (1992)
  • Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship, National Academy of Education (1992)
  • Dissertation, Whiting Fellowship in the Humanities (1988)
  • Spencer Dissertation Fellowship for Research Related to Education, Woodrow Wilson Foundation (1987)

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