A NOTE ON SOURCES

Abstract

In conducting my research, I relied primarily on the archives of the University of Michigan, the University of California, Yale University, Harvard University, Columbia University, and Johns Hopkins University. My work in these archives was supplemented by published collections of these schools’ and other educational institutions’ annual reports as well as by various federal bulletins, contemporary newspapers, and secondary histories of the period generally and of higher education specifically. I have drawn heavily on the personal papers of University of Michigan president James Burrill Angell. The Angell Papers, housed at the university’s Bentley Historical Library, are enormously helpful for any scholar of higher education’s development and its role in greater society at the turn of the twentieth century. The papers are valuable for a variety of reasons. First is the length and breadth of Angell’s career: Angell served as president of the university for a remarkable period of thirty-eight years. Beyond this impressive biography, however, lies Angell’s open mind and quiet nature. These traits not only guided his governance and service but also defined his relations with his peers. Thus, the Angell Papers comprise an exceptional repository not only of his ideas and opinions but of those of his colleagues from across academia and public life. Owing to both his tenure and his position as a linchpin between the established private universities of the East and the developing public institutions of the West and the South, Angell invariably found himself involved—not necessarily as an arbiter, but as a sympathetic ear—in the various debates that shaped higher education’s contribution to the national state. Angell was not always the most vociferous participant in these debates. However, he was often the most central one—a conduit and a sounding board. While certainly fundamental to this project, the Angell Papers and