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The University of North Carolina Press
512 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 26 illus., notes, bibl., index
Power, Purpose, and American Higher Education
Winner of the 1995 Mayflower Cup for Nonfiction, Society of Mayflower Descendants in the State of North Carolina
Few North Carolinians are as well known or as widely respected as William Friday. Although he has never run for elected office, the former president of the University of North Carolina has been prominent in public affairs for decades and ranks as one of the most important American university presidents of the post-World War II era. In this comprehensive biography, William Link traces Friday's long and remarkable career.
Friday's thirty years as president of the university, from 1956 to 1986, spanned the greatest period of growth for higher education in American history, and he played a crucial role in shaping the sixteen-campus university during that time of tumultuous social change. In the 1960s and 1970s, he confronted a series of administrative challenges, including the expansion of the university system, the evolving role of the federal government in the affairs of a public university, an intercollegiate athletics scandal, the anticommunism crusade and the Speaker Ban, and racial integration.
Link also explores Friday's influential work outside the university in American higher education, on the Carnegie Commission on the Future of American Education and the White House Task Force on Education, and in the development of the National Humanities Center and the growth of Research Triangle Park. Now retired from the university, Friday heads the William R. Kenan, Jr., Fund and the Kenan Charitable Trust.
"A well-written and professionally crafted biography of a major figure in post-World War II higher education. It will be an essential building block for the sorely needed history of American colleges, professional schools, and universities since the mid-1960s."
--American Historical Review
"An important resource that will be invaluable when historians begin to write the history of post-World War II American higher education."
--History of Education Quarterly
"All Tar Heels . . . will benefit from reading this book."
--The State
"A book that should be read by anyone interested in the role that a president does and can play in heading an institution of higher learning. . . . An engrossing account."
--Choice
"An exemplary study of a major educational leader."
--Southern Cultures
"A fascinating account of Friday's reign during a period of explosive growth and unusual challenges in education and in politics."
--Charlotte Observer
Paper: $20.95
© 2009 The University of North Carolina Press
116 South Boundary Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27514-3808
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