What do you think?
Rate this book
The Floating University: Experience, Empire, and the Politics of Knowledge
The Floating University sheds light on a story of optimism and imperialist ambition in the 1920s.
In 1926, New York University professor James E. Lough—an educational reformer with big dreams—embarked on a bold experiment he called the Floating University. Lough believed that taking five hundred American college students around the globe by ship would not only make them better citizens of the world but would demonstrate a model for responsible and productive education amid the unprecedented dangers, new technologies, and social upheavals of the post–World War I world. But the Floating University’s maiden voyage was also its when the ship and its passengers returned home, the project was branded a failure—the antics of students in hotel bars and port city back alleys that received worldwide press coverage were judged incompatible with educational attainment, and Lough was fired and even put under investigation by the State Department.
In her new book, Tamson Pietsch excavates a rich and meaningful picture of Lough’s grand ambition, its origins, and how it reveals an early-twentieth-century America increasingly defined both by its imperialism and the professionalization of its higher education system. As Pietsch argues, this voyage—powered by an internationalist worldview—traced the expanding tentacles of US power, even as it tried to model a new kind of experiential education. She shows that this apparent educational failure actually exposes a much larger contest over what kind of knowledge should underpin university authority, one in which direct personal experience came into conflict with academic expertise. After a journey that included stops at nearly fifty international ports and visits with figures ranging from Mussolini to Gandhi, what the students aboard the Floating University brought home was not so much knowledge of the greater world as a demonstration of their nation’s rapidly growing imperial power.
In 1926, New York University professor James E. Lough—an educational reformer with big dreams—embarked on a bold experiment he called the Floating University. Lough believed that taking five hundred American college students around the globe by ship would not only make them better citizens of the world but would demonstrate a model for responsible and productive education amid the unprecedented dangers, new technologies, and social upheavals of the post–World War I world. But the Floating University’s maiden voyage was also its when the ship and its passengers returned home, the project was branded a failure—the antics of students in hotel bars and port city back alleys that received worldwide press coverage were judged incompatible with educational attainment, and Lough was fired and even put under investigation by the State Department.
In her new book, Tamson Pietsch excavates a rich and meaningful picture of Lough’s grand ambition, its origins, and how it reveals an early-twentieth-century America increasingly defined both by its imperialism and the professionalization of its higher education system. As Pietsch argues, this voyage—powered by an internationalist worldview—traced the expanding tentacles of US power, even as it tried to model a new kind of experiential education. She shows that this apparent educational failure actually exposes a much larger contest over what kind of knowledge should underpin university authority, one in which direct personal experience came into conflict with academic expertise. After a journey that included stops at nearly fifty international ports and visits with figures ranging from Mussolini to Gandhi, what the students aboard the Floating University brought home was not so much knowledge of the greater world as a demonstration of their nation’s rapidly growing imperial power.
320 pages, Hardcover
Published May 17, 2023
1 person is currently reading
48 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 6, 2024
This book was a very important work on a forgotten subject of how "study abroad" programs got started and the various theories of "knowledge formation" and the culture of universities through the centuries.
I gave it only two starts because the author could not get out of the way of her central subject -- a fascinating but flawed thinker and doer named James Lough who conceived the idea of the "floating university. He was sacked after he was found to have created conflicts of interests in the companies he formed around the "float" (a common issue today I've witnessed myself in academic institutions). While there are many fascinating elements to this tale which speak for themselves -- about the privileged whites in the top schools, about American imperialism and war-fighting abroad -- the author feels she constantly has to put her thumb on the scale and turn the book into a sort of Bunin's "Gentleman from San Francisco", banging away at the evils of Amerika at every turn -- in fact reinforcing the Amero-centric view and depriving the rest of the world of agency, including the agency of chosing American development.
So the all-white Dutch crew is excoriated for not even including the natives from their conquered territories. There is talk of 'gendered moral panic' because of engagements on board - but why can't parents justifiably worry about their daughters facing rape and unwanted pregnancy in isolation? The good old boys naturally use their connections to find friendly Americans or sympathizers abroad. Russia and China do the same thing, hello?
America's "university" had long since already floated abroad all over Asia and Europe and local authenticity isn't really explored. How could it be otherwise? The author skips over the trips to Germany, perhaps because it doesn't fit her theory, and after inserting her DEI theories into every paragraph, nevertheless includes a chapter praising one traveler's sketches of "folk life" and other "accomplishments" that by her lights she should have condemned -- just to have something positive to say before the boom is lowered on Prof. Lough for self-dealing.
The knowledge theory to which Lough adhered -- aquiring through direct experience -- might serve the author in continuing to study the communist uprising in China which she felt was "legitimate," although of course it led to mass crimes against humanity.
Normally I'd avoid an overly "woke" book on a subject but with so few books on this subject as I discovered, I read all the way through carefully and would re-read it again -- after I've tried some other book on this same topic that do exist such as Sydney Greenbie's 1929 study of the same trips.
Today, "study away" at NYU has a wide variety from Abu Dhabi to Tulsa, OK and a huge price tag of ~$50K making it still a bastion of the privileged.
I gave it only two starts because the author could not get out of the way of her central subject -- a fascinating but flawed thinker and doer named James Lough who conceived the idea of the "floating university. He was sacked after he was found to have created conflicts of interests in the companies he formed around the "float" (a common issue today I've witnessed myself in academic institutions). While there are many fascinating elements to this tale which speak for themselves -- about the privileged whites in the top schools, about American imperialism and war-fighting abroad -- the author feels she constantly has to put her thumb on the scale and turn the book into a sort of Bunin's "Gentleman from San Francisco", banging away at the evils of Amerika at every turn -- in fact reinforcing the Amero-centric view and depriving the rest of the world of agency, including the agency of chosing American development.
So the all-white Dutch crew is excoriated for not even including the natives from their conquered territories. There is talk of 'gendered moral panic' because of engagements on board - but why can't parents justifiably worry about their daughters facing rape and unwanted pregnancy in isolation? The good old boys naturally use their connections to find friendly Americans or sympathizers abroad. Russia and China do the same thing, hello?
America's "university" had long since already floated abroad all over Asia and Europe and local authenticity isn't really explored. How could it be otherwise? The author skips over the trips to Germany, perhaps because it doesn't fit her theory, and after inserting her DEI theories into every paragraph, nevertheless includes a chapter praising one traveler's sketches of "folk life" and other "accomplishments" that by her lights she should have condemned -- just to have something positive to say before the boom is lowered on Prof. Lough for self-dealing.
The knowledge theory to which Lough adhered -- aquiring through direct experience -- might serve the author in continuing to study the communist uprising in China which she felt was "legitimate," although of course it led to mass crimes against humanity.
Normally I'd avoid an overly "woke" book on a subject but with so few books on this subject as I discovered, I read all the way through carefully and would re-read it again -- after I've tried some other book on this same topic that do exist such as Sydney Greenbie's 1929 study of the same trips.
Today, "study away" at NYU has a wide variety from Abu Dhabi to Tulsa, OK and a huge price tag of ~$50K making it still a bastion of the privileged.
Read
November 24, 2023This was chosen by Pratinav Anil, Lecturer at St Edmund Hall, Oxford and author of Another India: The Making of the World’s Largest Muslim Minority, 1947-77 (Hurst, 2023), as one of History Today’s Books of the Year 2023.
Find out why at HistoryToday.com.
Find out why at HistoryToday.com.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews