Philosophy, Science and Higher Education

Mason W. Gross, the sixteenth president of Rutgers University, was a unique man who left his imprint on the university. During his presidency, Rutgers expanded from a student body of 18,000 to 30,000, the budget grew from $18 million to $68 million, an enormous construction program enhanced and enlarged the campuses at Newark, New Brunswick, and Camden, and new professional schools were founded. In effect, Gross presided over the transformation of Rutgers from a private university rooted in the colonial past to one of the largest state universities in the post-industrial present. Yet, Gross was a relaxed and much admired leader whose tenure spawned excellence in research coupled with civility in relations among students, faculty and administrators.

The speeches of Mason W. Gross are of more than ordinary interest and merit for two reasons. One is that he wrote them all himself. Woodrow Wilson was the last president of the United States who had no speechwriter. While this is less frequently characteristic of college presidents, it is a growing phenomenon. The second reason for the unique quality of his speeches is that Gross was essentially a teacher and student of philosophy. He was only incidentally an administrator, a title he disliked as being akin to 'bureaucrat.' The addresses selected for this volume were culled from some three hundred that were delivered between 1949 and 1971.

The speeches were chosen to reflect diverse themes and occasions. Their subjects range from ideas on education to thoughts about urban planning, and the occasions from commencement addresses to appearances before national organizations. Effortlessly urbane and civilized, always gracious and courteous, Mason W. Gross was a teacher and philosopher, a democrat and an aristocrat. In his new introduction, Irving Louis Horowitz, traces the philosophical sources of Mason Gross' thought as well as his practical implementation of those influences.