From the Cast-Iron Shore: In Lifelong Pursuit of Liberal Learning

by Francis Oakley

Overview

From the Cast-Iron Shore is part personal memoir and part participant-observer’s educational history. As president emeritus at Williams College in Massachusetts, Francis Oakley details its progression from a fraternity-dominated institution in the 1950s to the leading liberal arts college it is today, as ranked by U.S. News and World Report.

Oakley’s own life frames this transformation. He talks of growing up in England, Ireland, and Canada, and his time as a soldier in the British Army, followed by his years as a student at Yale University. As an adult, Oakley’s provocative writings on church authority stimulated controversy among Catholic scholars in the years after Vatican II. A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Medieval Academy of America, and an Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he has written extensively on medieval intellectual and religious life and on American higher education.

Oakley combines this account of his life with reflections on social class, the relationship between teaching and research, the shape of American higher education, and the challenge of educational leadership in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. The book is an account of the life of a scholar who has made a deep impact on his historical field, his institution, his nation, and his church, and will be of significant appeal to administrators of liberal arts colleges and universities, historians, medievalists, classicists, and British and American academics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780268104047
Publisher:	University of Notre Dame Press
Publication date:	03/08/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	708
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

Francis Oakley is the Edward Dorr Griffin Professor of the History of Ideas Emeritus, and president emeritus of Williams College. He is also president emeritus of the American Council of Learned Societies, New York. He is the author and editor of numerous books, including The Watershed of Modern Politics: Law, Virtue, Kingship and Consent (1300 to 1650) and The Mortgage of the Past: Reshaping the Ancient Political Inheritance (1050 to 1300).

Read an Excerpt

My early years at elementary school had provided good conditions for learning. The teachers were kindly and attentive, the setting and atmosphere relatively benign – though marred somewhat in my case by the amount of anti-Irish feeling prevalent among the boys and leading to my involvement in an unfortunate series of fights or scuffles. Liverpool, in this like Boston, numbers among its population a comparatively large proportion of people who are ultimately of Irish descent – most coming from families whose arrival dated back to the great migration that occurred in the 1850s in the context of the potato famine and during the decade or two immediately following. In contrast with the Boston Irish, however, who continue proudly to think of themselves as somehow “Irish,” by the time of the Second World War their Liverpool equivalents had long since ceased to think of themselves as anything other than English. It was a great irony, then, that so many of the boys who jeered at me, sneering that the Irish were dirty people who lived with their pigs, or were Nazi sympathizers guilty of refueling the very German submarines that were torpedoing Allied shipping, and so on, bore, unlike me, unambiguously Irish surnames like Murphy, Kelly, O’Flaherty, O’Brien, O’Donnell and O’Connell. Whatever the case, it wasn’t much fun. But the miseries involved were no more than intermittent, and they were dwarfed by the startling change of atmosphere that later occurred when my school, attached to the parish of St. Francis of Assisi, had to take in the boys and girls from the school attached to Holy Trinity parish which could cater to their needs only into their eighth year. These were the children whom we came to dread and to whom we referred as the kids from “under the bridge” – the local equivalent of the American term “across the tracks.” For the bridge in question carried the railway line that ran parallel to the Garston dockside area and the children in question came from the old, grim and slummy row housing crammed in between the railway and the river. They were a rough and tough lot, often ill-fed, ill-clad and dirty (upon their arrival head lice became a problem for all of us), as well as ill-behaved, adept at cruel bullying and, as I would now in retrospect judge, frequently immature for their age. Though there were some striking exceptions, learning tended to bulk large neither in their own priorities nor in those of their parents, and our classes, two of them side by side in one open classroom, with a third separated from the other two by nothing more substantial than a flimsy glass partition, swiftly took on some of the characteristics associated with the word “bedlam.” The male teachers at the school having been called up for military service, they had had to be replaced by women who had left the teaching profession after getting married, sometimes long years earlier, some of whom found it difficult or even impossible to cope with the obstreperous behavior of the new arrivals. The noise level, accordingly, could sometimes reach appalling dimensions, and I can remember wishing longingly for the headmaster, the only man still on the staff, to show up with his cane, punish the promoters of chaos, and restore order, if only for a while. He himself was an excellent teacher when he had the chance to take over a class (he was kind enough to give me some tutoring in arithmetic after school hours), but it was his unforgiving wartime fate to have to spend much of his time making punitive rounds from class to class in order simply to keep the lid on.

My departure, then, for SFX, where Noel was still at school, was something of a welcome relief. The Junior City Scholarship not only took care of school fees but also included an allowance to help with the purchase of the requisite (maroon) school blazer, cap and tie, and defrayed the costs involved in travelling to and from school via public transport – tramcar and, later, bus. The school had been founded not long after the Jesuits established themselves in a parish at Liverpool in the wake of Catholic Emancipation (1829) and the abrogation of the centuries-old Penal Laws that had burdened Catholics and excluded them from public life. It was situated close to the city center in what had, in the nineteenth century, been a prosperous mercantile district but which, by 1943, had degenerated into a half bombed-out slum. While the school building itself had incurred only minor damage during the Blitz, Salisbury Street, on which it stood, had taken a bit of a beating with the surviving houses sticking up unevenly like rotting teeth embedded in a singularly unattractive, rubble-strewn gum.

Upon that school, then, we descended six days a week (half-days on Wednesdays and Saturdays), boys from all over Merseyside and contiguous parts of the county of Lancashire. Some of those from the county bore surnames like Blundell and Scarisbrick that had a long and proud association with the stubborn regional tradition of Catholic recusancy, or refusal to conform to the Reformation religious settlement. We came by tramcar, train, bike and bus, and, identified unmistakably by our school uniforms, had frequently to run something of a gauntlet between the tram or bus stop and the school gate, pursued by jeers of “College Puddin’” from the local toughs. The trip from where we lived in Garston took about an hour and involved changing trams at the transfer point known as “Penny Lane” – like Strawberry Fields and the Cast-Iron Shore, a local name later to be destined for immortality by virtue of its association with a Beatles song. And I have vivid memories from the years that ensued of desperately trying to memorize geometry theorems or Latin conjugations and declensions while seated, schoolbound and petrified, at the back of a freezing and swaying tram. The school building on which we converged, a three-storey piece of Victoriana now renovated and part of the Liverpool Hope University campus, was then a rather grim, gloomy and grimy place, threadbare after years of economic depression and war, with large but dirty windows and a toilet and washroom facility which, while less appallingly noisome than the one at my equally old and run-down elementary school, had long since seen all its putative soap-dispensers smashed and was almost permanently bereft of even the merest trickle of hot water.

(excerpted from chapter 4)

Table of Contents

Prelude

Part 1. LIVERPOOL

1. The secure realm of BEFORE

2. The shadowed world of AFTER

3. Trajectories of Fear

4. Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam

Part 2. LISSANANNY, OXFORD, TORONTO, CAMBRIDGE, MA., PRESTON, ALDERSHOT, CATTERICK, GLOUCESTER, NEW HAVEN

5. Poblacht na hÉireann

6. Collegium Corporis Christi

7. Oh, Canada!

8. On Her Majesty’s Service

9. Lux et veritas

Part 3. WILLIAMSTOWN

10. Williamstown and its College

11. Encountering the Old Williams

12. The Transformative Sixties (i): The New Williams

13. The Transformative Sixties (ii): The Second Vatican Council

14. Vita contemplativa: Teaching and Research

15. Vita activa (i): Matters of governance

16. Vita activa (ii): The administrative turn

17. Presidential Years (i): The job: nature, range and variety

18. Presidential Years (ii): Organization, appointments, initiatives

19. Presidential Years (iii): Principal challenges confronted

20. Aftermath

Postlude

Acknowledgements

Citations

Editorial Reviews

"In a thoroughly beguiling way, Francis Oakley shares with the reader his own repeated surprise at the sinuous path along which his life has proceeded. Intelligence and determination played key roles, as did some good teachers, a strong family, and a deep faith. The memoir is beautifully written and is marked by humor, a storyteller's gift for moving the story along, and a generosity of spirit that repeatedly impressed me. This book was my warm companion for several days. When I finished it, I missed it. I think others will feel that way too." —Thomas F. X. Noble, Andrew V. Tackes Professor of History Emeritus, University of Notre Dame

“We are indebted to Francis Oakley—medieval historian, political philosopher, college president, and scholar of the liberal arts college in the United States—for this literary, even lyrical, account of his youth and education as an Irish Catholic in Liverpool; his studies at Oxford, Toronto, and Yale; and his distinguished career at Williams College. This extremely interesting autobiographical commentary on schooling, politics, and higher education in the twentieth century will inform and fascinate scholars and general readers.” —Bruce A. Kimball, Ohio State University

"Written in prose as captivating as a novel, Francis Oakley recounts his journey from working class childhood in Liverpool to influential president of a leading liberal arts college in the United States. It is a remarkable story about family life, abiding faith and friendships, and dedicated teaching and scholarship. It is also a story of inspired leadership that anyone interested in higher education will find compelling and admirable." —Kenda Mutongi, Williams College

"This is an extraordinary book. One of Francis Oakley's rare qualities is his ability to stand back and look at himself and the situation objectively, even at the time. This characteristic is especially clear in his responses to the many challenges to education posed by students (and agitators) in the 1960s and 1970s. His self-awareness and objectivity, his success in remaining calm and open-minded yet firm in principle, was extraordinary. And as he hints, faculties today face some of the same challenges. They can well learn from him." —Jeffrey B. Russell, emeritus, University of California, Santa Barbara

“. . .this is less a book about higher education and its ways than about ‘the lifelong pursuit of liberal learning’—learning not just from teaching and scholarship, but also from patient listening to those who disagree with you, whether irate students with their ‘non-negotiable demands,’ skeptical trustees, or faculty who find some curricular suggestions to be ‘just not the Williams way.’” —Commonweal

“In his beautifully written memoir, Francis Oakley . . . former president of Williams College . . . tells the tale of [his] journey from being an Irish immigrant in England through his education as a first-generation college student at Oxford and then his crossing to North America. . . . The book is . . . illuminating, amusing, wise, and moving.” —America

“From the Cast-Iron Shore testifies to… the spectrum of accomplishments and challenges arising from the nature of small collegiate life and the rapidly changing political, social, and cultural forces of the latter twentieth century… Oakley’s testimony to the reality, immediacy, and power of campus life can and does directly shape the intellectual imagination about the state of modern liberal arts colleges and their needs—and the demand to understand and properly contextualize, near and far.” —— University Bookman

From the Publisher

From the Cast-Iron Shore testifies to… the spectrum of accomplishments and challenges arising from the nature of small collegiate life and the rapidly changing political, social, and cultural forces of the latter twentieth century… Oakley’s testimony to the reality, immediacy, and power of campus life can and does directly shape the intellectual imagination about the state of modern liberal arts colleges and their needs—and the demand to understand and properly contextualize, near and far.

University Bookman

"Written in prose as captivating as a novel, Francis Oakley recounts his journey from working class childhood in Liverpool to influential president of a leading liberal arts college in the United States. It is a remarkable story about family life, abiding faith and friendships, and dedicated teaching and scholarship. It is also a story of inspired leadership that anyone interested in higher education will find compelling and admirable."

Kenda Mutongi

"This is an extraordinary book. One of Francis Oakley's rare qualities is his ability to stand back and look at himself and the situation objectively, even at the time. This characteristic is especially clear in his responses to the many challenges to education posed by students (and agitators) in the 1960s and 1970s. His self-awareness and objectivity, his success in remaining calm and open-minded yet firm in principle, was extraordinary. And as he hints, faculties today face some of the same challenges. They can well learn from him."

Jeffrey B. Russell

. . .this is less a book about higher education and its ways than about ‘the lifelong pursuit of liberal learning’—learning not just from teaching and scholarship, but also from patient listening to those who disagree with you, whether irate students with their ‘non-negotiable demands,’ skeptical trustees, or faculty who find some curricular suggestions to be ‘just not the Williams way.’

Commonweal

"In a thoroughly beguiling way, Francis Oakley shares with the reader his own repeated surprise at the sinuous path along which his life has proceeded. Intelligence and determination played key roles as did some good teachers, a strong family, and a deep faith. The memoir is beautifully written and is marked by humor, a storyteller's gift for moving the story along, and a generosity of spirit that repeatedly impressed me. This book was my warm companion for several days. When I finished it I missed it. I think others will feel that way too."

Thomas F. X. Noble

We are indebted to Francis Oakley—medieval historian, political philosopher, and college president—for this literary, even lyrical, account of his youth and education as an Irish Catholic in Liverpool; his studies at Oxford, Toronto, and Yale; and his distinguished career at Williams College. This extremely interesting autobiographical commentary on schooling, politics, and higher education in the twentieth century will inform and fascinate scholars and general readers.

Bruce A. Kimball

In his beautifully written memoir, Francis Oakley . . . former president of Williams College . . . tells the tale of [his] journey from being an Irish immigrant in England through his education as a first-generation college student at Oxford and then his crossing to North America. . . . The book is . . . illuminating, amusing, wise, and moving.

America