Resources

The Dean’s Demise offers a disturbing reminder that seminaries and the church are not exempt from the abuse of pastoral powers to coerce sexual demands from colleagues, students, and even children entrusted to their spiritual care. With over fifty years of experience in theological education in the roles of minister, professor, and dean, Richard Fletcher crafts a compelling fictional case study of Dean Karl Wolf and presents comprehensive viewpoints from the perpetrator, the victims and their families, and the school administrators. Fletcher starts the book by describing young Karl Wolf as a promising scholar while foreshadowing his potential liability by alluding to his insatiable need for admiration and power. Fletcher then takes the reader through Wolf’s academic rise to become the dean of a prominent divinity school, all the while sketching his sexual hunts. Wolf is indeed a predator. The reading experience feels almost voyeuristic at times. Fletcher evokes a complex range of emotions in the reader with the secret intimate details of affairs and their aftermaths. Wolf’s blatant disregard for the wellbeing of his victims and his self-serving lies fuel an emotional response and at the same time demand that one thinks through one’s feelings with regard to the physical, emotional, and spiritual damages inflicted on the victims and their families. In addition to providing a profile of the mind and actions of a sexual predator, in The Dean’s Demise we confront the response of seminary officials, including their theological and moral deliberations, and the process of how the school ends up resolving, or rather settling the sexual harassment case against the dean. In light of the multiple stakeholders presented in the unfolding narrative, this book is a rich resource for generating discussions on many fronts, including theological reflections on power and the brokenness of humanity, justice issues and accountability, personality and mental health issues in seminaries, and practical legality around sexual harassment cases. A limitation to the helpfulness of this book is that the content is outdated. Although the book was published in 2016, the accounts of the events are recorded from 1979 to the early summer months of 1993. The content of the book, the nature of Wolf’s sexual predatory behavior, and the ways the school administration respond, are consistent with the time period in which the book is set. Since the early 1990’s, sexual harassment awareness and training initiatives in workplaces and schools have increased. As opposed to the blatant predatory behavior of Wolf detailed in the book, now there are specific definitions and criterion of more nuanced behaviors which constitute sexual harassment. With concrete definitions, guidelines, and policies in place, today’s academic administration’s deliberation and handling of such cases is very different than the deliberation portrayed in the book that relied on collective wisdom. The school administrative demographics are another aspect which date the book  – being all men, presumably white. With increasing female and minority faculty members, deans, and presidents in academic institutions, different understandings and experiences shape how power, abuse, and sexual harassment are defined and handled. Whereas all the victims in Fletcher’s book are female, in today’s reality there are more women in power positions that blur and render more complex binary and stereotypically gendered depictions of perpetrator and victim. As sexual predatory behaviors occur within the context of relationships of power and privilege, gender and cultural influences must be considered when deliberating sexual harassment cases.

Why do so few Hispanic males enroll in and graduate from institutions of higher learning? Why are Latinas, by contrast, enjoying so much more success than Latinos? Moreover, why is there a dearth of research addressing these questions? This book, which includes twelve chapters written by leading Latin@ scholars, addresses these questions with the goal of broadening readers’ contextual understanding, deepening their comprehension of the specific challenges faced by Hispanic males in higher education, and securing their commitment to Latino success. The book’s contributors adroitly explore the complex challenges that Latino males face in the context of American society and higher education. The book’s first two chapters discuss many of the socio-economic factors contributing to the current Latino “crisis” in higher education. They carefully examine the Hispanic gender gap and the ways in which it is manifested along the educational pipeline, alternate life pathways for Latino males (such as military, low-paying labor, prison), and factors that frequently hinder Latinos from enrolling in college (such as lack of financial aid literacy and inadequate academic preparation). Multiple chapters investigate key cultural factors that significantly impact Latino experiences in higher education. Chapters Four, Five, and Eleven, for example, focus on Latino identity and intersectionality, probing complicated issues (for example, relationships between caballerismo, Latino persistence, and high attrition rates) and introducing humanizing nuances (such as the Latino male privilege paradox). Chapters Two, Seven, Eight, and Nine pose critical questions about the role that familismo plays in hindering and promoting Latino academic success. Those chapters also address other relevant topics such as the unique features of Mexican sub-culture and various forms of Latin@ cultural wealth. The final section of the book calls on academics to more thoroughly research the crisis pertaining to Latinos in higher education.  Chapter Ten describes research on college administrators’ levels of awareness about the challenges faced by Latinos in academia. Their findings, namely that administrators’ awareness not only varied widely, but also that some administrators resisted acknowledging problem areas altogether, underscore the urgent need for more research. Chapter Eleven suggests that studies which compare and contrast the experiences of Latinos and Latinas might yield much fruit, while the authors of Chapter Twelve advocate for a strengths-based, data rich, interdisciplinary approach to research on Latinos, an approach which is successfully modelled throughout the book. In conclusion, educational leaders and researchers are sure to find this book – and especially the new research that it presents – a valuable and generative resource. The book’s contributors helpfully shift the research focus from Latino students’ resiliency and deficits to exploration of the social and cultural factors that shape their educational experiences. While the authors do not offer many substantive recommendations for educational programming and practice or directly address issues pertaining to Latinos in graduate education, they do make a strong case for “ensuring that the success of Latino males in higher education” becomes a national imperative. After reading the book, one also hopes that educators will wholeheartedly embrace Latino success as a moral imperative.

Like many teachers, I was trained to expect student’s participation in the classroom to be many things at once:  prepared, right on the issue at stake, ready to offer deep insights and if possible, be passionate. I also was trained to exclude the needs and subjective experiences of my students, expecting them to bracket their suffering, their sorrows, and their traumas, at least during class time. Oh, and I was trained to expect students to be as text-based as I am, even though reading habits have changed. I still resent it when the connections made in class are not related to the texts. After a while, it is so easy to catch students who are just pretending that they have read or make a comment based on a line on page 78 without having actually read the text. I get really frustrated when students don’t read the assigned texts or when they are not fully present, having their hearts and minds elsewhere. All of these forms of participation in class demand practical responses from the professors that are not as clear as we might hope. Let me give an example: one day a student offered a harsh critique of the book we were reading. I asked him to name what in the book he didn’t like. After 3 attempts to continue with his critique, it was clear he didn’t read a thing. What do I do? Call him out in front of everyone? Talk to him in private? Wait until the end of the semester? Other forms of participation, or non-participation, are part of the experience of the class. Students who “participate” by sleeping in class, or using their phones and computers. There is the gaze of the one who is checking emails and looking at Facebook. And there are the smiles, facial reactions, and even laughter when they are texting. All this is why I tend not to let students use computers or phones during class. But how to do that when the readings are on their computers, or when the cares of the world are (often) more compelling than what our students find in our classrooms? When we have only their bodies, and not their minds and hearts and spirits, passions and convictions, strong yesses and necessary nos, then what? Maybe we have to be open to the possibility that some of our students are part of conversations they cannot tell us unless we ask and are open to what we will hear.  Besides the objective forms of grading participation regarding reading texts, there is so much more that is at stake when our students are in the classroom. I had a student who would sleep every day in my class. For a long while, I thought about sending him an email saying he couldn’t make this class his bedroom. But then, I decided to talk to him personally. We met and he then told me that life had been very difficult for him, that he was working overtime to take care of his unemployed mother, his little brother, and teenage sister. He apologized. What do I do? Tell him if he continues this way he cannot pass? Find ways to help him when I don’t have time to help? Keep him in the class for as long as I can until he resolves his problems? Another student was quiet all the time. Couldn’t speak. Talking to her I learned she was going through very difficult personal times, but couldn’t say what it was. She kept quiet. What to do? Flunk her? After the semester was over she decided to talk to me and told me she had become pregnant but had lost the baby. She could not make sense of her life, and the only places she found some sort of sustenance, relief and perhaps even coherence was the classes she took that semester, including mine. Another student received the news that his mother was terminally ill. He missed more classes than he was allowed in order to pass this class. What was I supposed to do? Objectively speaking, knowledge is a composition of several issues. Knowledge is not only about the present of abstract thinking but also by what is around us, with its feelings and emotions, the composition of social classes, objects and images used, sensations around expectations, fears and hopes, general conditions of life. The best forms of learning are the ones that can integrate all these aspects of life in direct and/or transversal ways. But for students in crisis, the ‘best forms of learning’ may require each teacher to bend a bit, to listen a little longer, to walk with the student an extra mile as she is able. Does that mean that every teacher needs to be a therapist or a chaplain? Yes and no. Perhaps more yes than no? Well, yes because when we teach we are teaching about the whole life and not only about the specifics of a certain discipline/knowledge. Even the specifics of a certain knowledge influences the whole way of living. And no, absolutely no, since we are not professionals in these areas, and we do not have the required formation, and cannot offer the appropriate care. In classrooms, there are so many borders to negotiate and fundamental boundaries that must be kept and honored. To deal with each case that arises in our classrooms is always so difficult to discern. But if I am unwilling to listen, or if I am captive to my objective model of learning, I may be injuring my students while professing rigor, standards, and policies. How teachers and students learn together is a wonder for me! How we survive a whole time together is a mystery to me! And when we witness transformed lives is a miracle to me! These truths are sometimes too much for me. For you, too?

With the ongoing Syrian refugee crisis quite literally fanning the flames of Islamophobia across Europe, Adem Aygün’s well-written and meticulously researched book makes for trenchant reading on the state of Islamic religious education for Muslim minorities in Germany. While Aygün’s particular focus is on Islamic youth in Turkey and among Turkish immigrants in Germany, the book raises questions about Islamic religious pedagogy that have larger, E.U.-wide implications, namely through its challenge to both how non-Christian religion is taught (or not) by the secular apparatuses of European universities and secondary schools, and the pedagogical methods for learning theology that are intrinsic to immigrant Muslim communities in a European country like Germany. The book will interest anyone who works on or with the models of faith development as pioneered by the American theologian James W. Fowler (1940-2015); as Aygün rightfully notes, Religious Socialization constitutes one of the first attempts to bring Fowler’s influential step-models to a non-Christian context (183), using Fowler’s “stages of faith” to frame how Muslim youth in Germany and Turkey see themselves in relationship to their religion and the larger, social world. This book is important reading for scholars who work on the state of theological education in Europe, particularly when it comes to non-Christian religions. Fowler, like William James long before him, decoupled belief from catechism or creed, and relocated it (via a developmental psychology derived from Piaget) in the personal experiences of the self. Some of the fundamental characteristics of Fowler’s hierarchical categories of faith development – such as self-realization, and the acceptance of complexity and diversity – are indubitably imprinted by the liberal Protestantism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and it could be said that Fowler’s project was as much a (biased) theological one as it was objectively psychological, or sociological. Aygün’s book, thus, begins by posing a fascinating methodological problem: can Fowler’s typologies, tinged as they are with their echoes of Paul Tillich and H. Richard Niebuhr, even fit a non-Christian setting, where the relationship between the self, God, and the world ostensibly seems to have a fundamentally different kind of constellation? Aygün’s book is part sociological – his seventy in-depth interviews with Islamic youth from the bulk of the empirical chapters of the work – but also part theological, and the first chapters offer illuminating close readings of the Koran and the Islamic concept of Fitrah to demonstrate (in answer to this question) how critical thinking and self-reflexivity are arguably at the very core of Muslim faith. Reading Islamic theology through Fowler’s models, Aygün deftly argues, illuminates how Islamic traditions are more than adequately equipped with the kinds of theological tools necessary for grappling with the individual’s place in modernity, and the successful integration of the self’s belief with all the complexities of the global world (Fowler’s last, and highest, stage of development being the “universalizing faith” of a Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr.). The empirical portion of Religious Socialization that presents and reflects on the results of Aygün’s extensive interviews provides some surprising juxtapositions between Turkish Muslims living in Germany and their peers in Turkey. Because of the lack of Islamic institutional apparatuses for Muslim migrants in Germany, the teaching and learning about the Koran has strengthened the family as the critical locus for value-building and faith formation, whereas Turkey’s complex and dense history of state secularization and religious politics has meant that Turkish youth have consistently had a much broader and more diverse exposure to the kinds of the theological education necessary for progressive faith development: the net effect being that religious belief among Turkish youth is “easily on average higher” on Fowler’s scale than it is for youth in Germany (183). A fascinating observation is offered by Aygün here, that the ad hoc system of immigrant mosque education that developed in Germany in the seventies and eighties (54-55) has meant that the mosque as a site of faith-formation plays a much more significant role than it effectively does in Turkey. Regrettably, Aygün notes, the dominant pedagogy offered in these German mosques remains a kind of medieval formalism that focuses on catechismal recitations, often at the expense of developing critical thinking and self-reflection. Ultimately, this kind of “imprisoning of the individual into traditional ways of thinking” (193) has hurt the viability of Islam as a public religion, as it loses its functionality within the pluralizing contexts of the E.U. Aygün is not simply casting stones: the book is a strong, pragmatic call for the German (and by extension, European) university and school systems to better integrate Islamic theological education into their curriculums, and thereby inculcate the kind of reflective and dynamic forms of belief that espouse the cosmopolitan values as present in the higher levels of Fowler’s scaled categories of faith development. Such an institutionalized religious pedagogy could help undo stereotypical prejudices against Islam (all the more resurgent now than at the time of Aygün’s original writing), aid in the coexistence of different religions, and even potentially benefit Turkey’s attempts to join the E.U. (197). There is, to date, very little of such institutionalization in place. The recently established partnership between the universities of Frankfurt and Gießen for a Center for Islamic Studies with a special emphasis on teaching (Religionslehrer) is one positive sign of development in this direction (and Aygün is now teaching at Gießen as a professor for Islamic theology and religious education). Given the extraordinary inflow of Islamic refugees into Germany over the last ten months alone – at least 800,000, by conservative estimates – more such university initiatives are urgently needed, both for the state of European inter- and intra-religious education, and perhaps for the fate of the E.U. itself, with its still laudable, if utopic, commitment to a pluralistic open society.

What functions occupy your time as an academic? Are they equally respected, sensibly arranged, and fairly evaluated? Are they well-coordinated with the mission of your institution? Do they complement the functions your colleagues carry out? Do they all contribute to student learning? If you have ever wondered about such questions, you must read this book. Adrianna Kezar and David Maxey, of the Delphi Project on the Changing Faculty and Student Success, gathered a distinguished group of contributors to produce this volume on the future role of faculty in U.S. higher education. They start by pairing two concerns often considered separately despite their proven interconnection: the erosion in recent decades of the traditional faculty model (the full-time, tenured or tenure-track faculty member), and student success. The unbundling of faculty roles, and the consequent re-distribution to assorted academic personnel, of curriculum development, course design, content delivery, assessment, advising, research, community engagement, and so forth—has negatively affected faculty-student interactions and therefore student learning and self-efficacy. Adjunct faculty members are not the problem. Even the disappearance of tenure is not the problem. The problem has been the random, reactive, and poorly conceived responses to market forces and technological revolutions in education. The volume goes on to raise many other concerns that changes to the faculty have effected, including: an evolving understanding of academic freedom based less on individual rights and more on collective responsibility, the way that internationalization of higher education and a global academic workforce challenge assumptions about U.S. supremacy, the need to base faculty evaluations on the success of the department as well as individual achievement, a shift in faculty development programs from mere technology training toward adult learning, and the pros and cons of customizing academic careers to support work-life balance. Contributors do not uncritically valorize the traditional faculty model; while they generally support the return to more full-time positions, they also recognize the need for flexibility and coordination in the design of faculty roles, alignment of those roles with institutional priorities, and collaboration rather than competition among communities of scholars. One specific innovation lifted up as noteworthy is the way medical schools have created multiple tracks (investigator, clinical-educator, clinical, research, and educator) that provide distinct but parallel career pathways for their faculty while simultaneously serving their institutional needs. Though the book does not conclude with a fully envisioned alternative model for the 21st century, several points of consensus do emerge, especially around the need for collegiality, professionalism, responsibility for students, differentiation and diversification of roles, and more expansive definitions of research and scholarship. This collaboration is a rare and refreshing example of one to which the contributions are evenly strong. Every chapter piqued my interest. Readers of this journal may especially appreciate the chapter on academic freedom because it is written by a religion scholar and has a familiar ring. Readers new to the literature on developments in higher education might first want to read Ernest Boyer’s 1990 Scholarship Reconsidered, referenced frequently by contributors. Envisioning the Faculty for the 21st Century will become an equally important and influential work. Works Cited Boyer, Ernest L., author.  Drew Moser, Todd C. Ream, and John M. Braxton, editors. 2016 expanded edition.  Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate.  San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

This volume of collected articles provides snapshots of collaborative teaching and learning in action at US universities. While the authors describe a range of techniques and structures, there is an emphasis throughout on intentionally building and sustaining communities composed of teachers, learners, and even community partners. Richard A. Gale (“Learning in the Company of Others”) and Jeffrey L. Bernstein, et al. (“How Students, Collaborating as Peer Mentors…”) illustrate the positive effects of collaboration in college courses. Gale succinctly articulates numerous benefits of collaborative teaching, from increasing fruitful ambiguity that can inspire critical thinking, to providing teachers with opportunities for “the systematic investigation of student learning” (21). Bernstein’s experience working with students as peer mentors shows that a collaborative approach to class leadership can embolden students to take risks with low stakes, improving their participation in brainstorming and creative activities. The majority of authors convincingly demonstrate that collaborative learning offers students benefits far beyond the immediate course or program experience. Ellen G. Galantucci and Erin Marie-Sergison Krcatovich (“Exploring Academia”) emphasize that their experience as undergraduate collaborative learners helped them prepare for their later work in graduate school and as educators. These authors note that the mentoring they received contributed to their professionalization and enabled them to discuss pedagogy confidently on the academic job market. Multiple articles address the potential for fruitful collaboration with community partners beyond the university. “Collaborative Structures in a Graduate Program,” by Robyn Otty and Lauren Milton, describes a multi-year Centralized Service Learning Model (CSLM) that combined the work of two graduate courses and several community programs. In their article “The Development of a High-Impact Structure: Collaboration in a Service-Learning Program,” Brooke A. Flinders, et al. illustrate students’ internalization of high-impact learning outcomes, including “participation in meaningful work” (44). One important contribution of this text is the collection of students’ testimonies. A number of the authors asked course participants to complete some form of self-assessment. Overwhemingly, students who worked as peer mentors or group leaders reported gaining confidence, independence, critical thinking skills, and practical experience that could be used in the professional world. In Flinders, et al., “The Development of a High-Impact Structure,” young professionals in the nursing field provided feedback about ways their participation in the service-learning program helped them prepare for clinical work. This volume offers a wealth of suggestions for designing learning communities; Milton D. Cox’s contribution (“Four Positions of Leadership…”) identifies traits that administrators and facilitators have found to be essential when organizing faculty learning communities. Each article clearly explains its authors’ methodology, making this a helpful resource for teachers who are looking for direction in implementing collaborative learning strategies. While it might have been helpful in some cases to learn more about how community partners assessed the contributions of university teams to their work, overwhelmingly the articles demonstrate that collaborative learning is beneficial for students and teachers. For those looking to build more collaboration into their courses, this set of articles provides inspiration and concrete guidelines

This sprawling volume, which incorporates co-written essays alongside those written by the main author, focuses on several themes in global higher education in the last half century, including massification, systemic inequalities, and the hegemonic role of English. Key areas where higher education has changed significantly include Asia, India, and Latin America; Africa still lags behind in many ways. The book is organized in five major sections: “The Global Context”; “The Implications of Globalization”; “Centers and Peripheries”; “Comparative Perspectives”; and “Teachers and Students.” This review will focus mostly on the final section as most relevant to the readership of this online publication. The authors aim high in their goal of surveying the landscape of rapidly globalizing higher education over fifty or so years. The first few chapters provide a modicum of historical perspective on higher education and go on to examine the most recent “revolution” in higher education through four interrelated forces: “mass higher education, globalization, the advent of the knowledge society and the importance of research universities in it, and information technology” (16). The author(s) note that these forces have fed the growth of privatization, international rankings, and burdensome systems of assessment, among other developments. The essays in the following sections focus in different and sometimes overlapping ways on those themes, noting that the recent internationalization of universities is a necessary response to increased globalization. Anyone who works in higher education would come away with a better general understanding, if not an in-depth knowledge, of trends in higher education after reading these chapters. Depending on the topic, Altbach and his occasional co-authors provide few citations for their claims; for instance, the chapter on “The Globalization of Rankings” includes just one reference, to an essay by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker. Consequently, this volume will be of limited use for those wishing to pursue their own research in these areas. The final section (Chapters Seventeen and Eighteen) is titled “Teachers and Students,” but it is more accurately about the ways academic work is contracted for and compensated as well as reasons for student political activism. Both topics yield slippery data, so both chapters seem more tentative than definitive. It is clear from the data that they do use that disparities in remuneration and opportunity are widespread across academia worldwide. It is also clear that nobody truly understands the driving forces behind student activism except in certain local cases. Neither chapter addresses issues related to curriculum or pedagogy as they focus more on broader institutional and bureaucratic issues. This is perhaps necessary given the broad sweep of this book overall, but it also means that this book will be of less use to readers of this journal than one more focused on actual classrooms and pedagogical continuities and changes around the world. Despite this, readers looking for an overview of the ways globalization has driven the internationalization of higher education will appreciate the broad sweep of this volume.

According to the publisher’s website, books in the series “Jewish Identities in Post-Modern Society” are dedicated to exploring the “multiple ways in which contemporary Jews express and define their Jewish identity.” The titles in the series “explore the sociological, historical, and psychological basis for these identities and the ways in which they reflect a rejection and or integration of the norms, morals, and values of post modern society.” Elie Holzer’s Attuned Learning is the eleventh contribution to that effort and his second contribution to the series. The purpose of the series helps to explain the approach that Holzer takes to his subject: Part One is devoted to “Conceptual Frameworks;” Part Two focuses on what “attuned learning” means for the “co-learners” devoted to the task; Part Three unpacks the implications of the theoretical framework for reading Rabbinic literature that Holzer outlines in Part One; and Part Four briefly explores the implications of his work for “Contemporary Contexts.” The nature of the series also explains why Holzer relies heavily on Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricouer, among others, for the philosophical assumptions that drive his work (20, 22-30). Arguing that “there is no such thing as an innocent reading” of any text, Holzer contends that the only antidote to self-deception is an honest effort “to clarify what lies at the basis of our interests as far as possible” (22-23). Students reading ancient texts must identify the “foremeaning or preconceptions” that shape their reading (24) and they must avoid “identifying the meaning of the text with the author’s intention. Instead, a text establishes its own form of discourse as soon as it is written, offering something to be appropriated by the reader” (26). Having laid out his philosophical assumptions, Holzer then describes the attuned learning that both teachers and students can accomplish, using the discourse in rabbinic literature as an illustration, source, and foil. “Argumentative learning” can be found there and has its contribution to make (47ff.), but – as Parker Palmer notes -- it is also “doubled edged” and can degenerate into “a secretive, zero-sum game played by individuals for private gain” (57). At the heart of rabbinic exchange, however, is what Holzer describes as chavruta, which he translates as “‘companionship’ or ‘friendship’” (41, n. 5). Attentive to the moral and emotional quality of the learning process and the roles that each co-learner plays, even conflict is placed in very different context. Teachers and students advance in their understanding by listening to one another, for which “the divine presence” or the “Shechina” (71ff.) is a metaphor and “‘God’ is understood primarily as some transcendent quality of a genuine interpersonal experience” (73). Teachers who recognize the importance of chavruta and the perils of argumentative learning are alert to the experiences of the learner and avoid the dynamics that lead students to experience their teachers as “uncaring” (112f.), “disgruntled” (114f.), or “incompetent” (116f.). Instead, Holzer argues, they are to attend to the “visage” of their students. They “see” their faces (129-130) and they look for “illumination” (130ff.). Likewise, the students “welcome” the faces of their teachers (135ff.) and receive the “visage” of their instructors (138ff.), indicating their willingness to enter into the partnered learning that has been offered. The result is a process in which “educators… never allow their active and curious presence to transform the learners’ presence into a shadow of their learners,” but “stimulate learners to live a critically conscious presence in the pedagogical and historical process” (159). There is a good deal to be absorbed here for the theological educator, especially as an antidote to teaching that is either sterile and concerned with subject matter alone or views the student as an object of deconstruction. As Holzer describes it, both approaches are equally immoral (149-150 and ns. 12 and 13). Theological educators will also find reasons to differ with the author. Writing for a broader and not necessarily religious audience, Holzer defines God and God’s presence in ways that are scarcely adequate if one conceives of God as more than a metaphor. Given the richness of the rabbinic tradition, one also wonders whether we might have learned even more, if Holzer had allowed the rabbis to reflect on what they believed about God as both a teacher and a student of Torah (88ff.). But, given his philosophical assumptions, that gift is strained through sieve of post-modern philosophy, skeptical as he is of innocent readings, let alone the voice of God. One wonders whether deeper attunement might have entertained the possibility that there was another Visage, longing to be welcomed into the conversation.

Click Here for Book Review This volume looks at graduate education, specifically the doctorate, through the lens of adult education practice. Students in doctoral programs are, after all, adults. Building on principles of adult learning, the authors provide examples of academic excellence achieved through the incorporation of best practices in adult education, including: - practical suggestions for democratically negotiating the curriculum - best practices for nurturing responsible action for social justice, - ways of encouraging collaborative and noncompetitive learning and research, and - support in shifting paradigmatic assumptions beyond the Eurocentric frame. This is the 147th volume of the Jossey Bass series New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education. Noted for its depth of coverage, it explores issues of common interest to instructors, administrators, counselors, and policymakers in a broad range of education settings, such as colleges and universities, extension programs, businesses, libraries, and museums. (From the Publisher)