Title: Academic populism
Description: This dissertation examines Populist ideas about state colleges and universities in the United States during the late nineteenth century. Mobilizing a fragile coalition across divisions of race, gender, wealth, and region, Populism championed farmers and laborers, while questioning the virtue of elite professionals, executives, and scholars. Anchored by archival research in North Carolina, Kansas, and Nebraska, where the movement assumed control of state government, this study analyzes Populist attitudes towards access, curriculum, academic freedom, and funding. In addition to sparking heated debate over the priorities of state universities, Populism provided a rare articulation of the views of unschooled citizens, whose orientations towards higher education have often eluded historical inquiry. Most Populists expected state universities to emphasize access over achievement, agricultural curricula over the liberal arts, and the dissemination of information over advanced scholarly research. These demands mobilized popular pressure and illuminated the difficult choices facing public institutions of higher education as they sought to conceptualize democratic arenas for advanced learning. Despite the contentiousness of Populist rhetoric, the movement reflected an underlying enthusiasm about the potential for widespread enrollment in state universities. Populists believed that public higher education could disperse higher learning, reduce the distinctions between workers and professionals, and promote democratic civil society. Although the movement only achieved political power for a brief moment, Populist ideas pervaded state universities during their period of rapid development at the turn of the twentieth century. While most American universities embarked upon a long romance with meritocracy and expertise, the Populist movement defended an alternative agenda.

This intellectual, social, and institutional history reveals that the ideals of American public higher education emerged from this tension between grassroots advocacy and academic authority.