A. Lee Fritschler

The former Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education in the Clinton administration, Dr. A. Lee Fritschler set direction for higher education policy and administering the department’s higher education programs, including financial aid, FIPSE, GEAR UP, TRIO, international education, the Fulbright program, Developing Institutions, and the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Subsequently, he served as Vice President and Director of the Center for Public Policy Education at the Brookings Institution, which administers education programs in the United States and around the world for government and corporate executives. He is the first North American to serve on the Steering Committee of the European University Association, and he was the Chairman of the U.S. Postal Rate Commission. While President of Dickinson College, Dr. Fritschler co-founded the Annapolis Group, a continge nt of 110 presidents of the nation’s leading liberal arts colleges, build support for liberal arts programs in colleges. He is currently Professor and Director of Executive Education in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University. He is the author of many articles and four books, including Smoking and Politics: Bureaucracy Centered Policy Making.

His newest book, a work he co-wrote with Bruce Smith and Jeremy Mayer, is Closed Minds? Politics and Ideology in American Universities. The book concludes that the problem with U.S. higher education is not that institutions are too political but that they are not political enough and questions the notion that ideological bias harms student education. What is the political climate on campuses today? Is academic freedom alive or has it been suffocated by undo influences by groups from the left or the right? Can students and faculty of all political stripes freely express their views? What does the future hold for civic education on university campuses?

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