“Migration from Europe has occurred without interruption since the time America was discovered. There have always been some intellectuals, educated abroad, whose presence and work enriched our culture. Laura Fermi, however, analyzes a new and unique phenomenon in the history of immigration, the wave of intellectuals from continental Europe that from 1930 to 1941 brought to these shores well over 20,000 professional refugees. Most immigrant intellectuals were pushed out of the European continent by the dictatorships of that period; they were ‘the men and women who came to America fully made, with their Ph.D.’s or diplomas from art academies or music conservatories in their pocket, and who continue to engage in intellectual pursuits in this country.’ Among them we find Franz Alexander, Bruno Bettelheim, Enrico Fermi, Hannah Arendt, Albert Einstein, Igor Stravinsky, John von Neumann, Paul Tillich and a long sequence of Nobel Prize winners and exceptional scholars. Their contribution to American life continues to the present. Working with a sample of about 1,900 names and relying on personal contacts, interviews, memoirs, newspaper accounts, obituaries, and similar sources, Mrs. Fermi succeeds in conveying the significance of the intellectual immigration and the areas of its impact on America. She describes the personal trials and the successes of these persons caught up in the web of persecution and peregrinations leading to higher institutions of learning in the United States... the delightful style of the book, the new light it throws on the period studied from a participant observer’s position, and the insight it brings forth concerning the mutual enrichment of American and European intellectual communities make it enjoyable and instructive reading.” — Silvano M. Tomasi, The International Migration Review “Illustrious Immigrants is an honest and informative book; it is well-organized, well-informed, well-balanced... crammed with information, with illuminating anecdotes, often moving incidents and revealing statistics.” — Peter Gay, The New York Times “[R]ich in personal anecdote and communication which make delightful reading... in so many ways a splendid and useful book, tackling with imagination, industry, and a rare combination of personal concern and emotional detachment a subject that would frighten — indeed thus far has frightened — professional social historians by its magnitude and complexity.” — Alice Kimball Smith, Science “[Laura Fermi has] made an effort to bring together materials that exist nowhere else and to juxtapose them so as to reveal patterns that would otherwise be invisible. For this, we should be grateful... Mrs Fermi’s work is earnest and responsible.” — Harriet Zuckerman, Physics Today “[Laura Fermi is] an immensely knowledgeable, discerning, and unpretentious guide to the influx [of the intellectual migration from Fascist Europe], as well as a personal example of its lustrous quality... this engaging book... will prove to be indispensable to all students of transatlantic interactions.” — Cushing Strout, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science “This is an optimistic book, a contribution to a singular chapter in the history of American science and learning.” — Philip Morrison, Scientific American

The migration from Hitler's Europe to the U.S. Interpretations by some of the leading emigres.

Wilson Smith and Thomas Bender have assembled an essential reference for policymakers, administrators, and all those interested in the history and sociology of higher education.

Although America's universities have become the envy of the world for their creative energy and their production of transformative knowledge, few understand how and why they have become preeminent. This groundbreaking book traces the origins and the evolution of our great universities. It shows how they grew out of sleepy colleges at the turn of the twentieth century into powerful institutions that continue to generate new industries and advance our standard of living. Far from inevitable, this transformation was enabled by a highly competitive system that invested public tax dollars in university research and students while granting universities substantial autonomy. Today, America's universities face considerable threats. Even greater than foreign competition are the threats from within the United States. Under the Bush administration, government increasingly imposed ideological constraints on the freedom of academic inquiry. Restrictive visa policies instituted after 9/11 continue to discourage talented foreign graduate students from training in the United States. The international financial crisis, which has depleted university endowments and state investments in higher education, threatens the vitality of some of our greatest institutions of higher learning. In order to sustain and enhance the American tradition of excellence, we must nurture this powerful -- yet underappreciated -- national resource.