Glanzer tackles the elephant in the room of higher education: the removal of moral conscience from academia and the ensuing cacophony and discord.... Glanzer concludes this thought-provoking study by examining possible paths for returning to life-giving moral education within higher learning. Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

Perry L. Glanzer offers a well-informed interpretation of how mainstream American universities have arrived at an era when they are unable to offer meaningful moral education that allows room for diversities of communities and viewpoints.

This book sheds welcome light on buzz words prominent in contemporary debates over the ethical purposes of the American university: "citizenship," "virtue," "diversity," "empowerment," "democracy," "social justice," and more. A broad historical perspective, searching engagement with influential theorists, and trenchant reflection on current controversies make The Dismantling of Moral Education a must-read for any who believe that higher education should do more than just prepare for the first job.

Glanzer draws on the history of higher education to trace and then evaluate the changing approaches to moral education at American colleges and universities. He makes a compelling argument that most attempts to form students' moral commitments in a way appropriate to our pluralistic society have suffered from reducing students to only one of their many identities. Educational practitioners hailing from a range of ethical and religious commitments will benefit from wrestling with his critiques of common approaches as they seek to help students grow into people who will navigate our fractious culture responsibly.

This is the book that I wish that I and my academic colleagues would have read before getting into all of those "curriculum review" and "educational mission" discussions that have taken up so much time in my career. And that wish takes on an urgency these days as we engage in the campus battles that result when we ignore the crucial questions that Perry L. Glanzer explores here with such care. He points the way with clarity: we need to return to insights from the past that draw on a profound sense of our identities, grounded in our richly created natures.

The Dismantling of Moral Education: How Higher Education Reduced the Human Identity helps us understand the DNA of American university education and America itself in new ways. Perry L. Glanzer has made a seminal scholarly contribution that is genuinely enlightening.

[A]mbitious and stimulating.... Glanzer's book is the most recent and, in many ways, the most original contribution to what has been for at least thirty years a flood of books... that either lament or celebrate what is taken to be on all sides the gradual abandonment of moral formation as a vitally important part of a university education.