In Excellence Without a Soul, Harry Lewis, a Harvard professor for more than thirty years and Dean of Harvard College for eight, draws from his experience to explain how Harvard and our other great universities have lost sight of their educational mission. Harvard is unique; it is the richest, oldest, most powerful university in America, and so it has set many standards, for better or worse. Lewis provides an intimate history of this grand institution's struggle to define its intellectual and moral purpose in an increasingly consumerist higher education marketplace. Along the way he tours hot-button issues facing all colleges, such as grade inflation, date rape, and the role of American civic values in undergraduate education. Excellence Without a Soul is a persuasive, impassioned plea for the restoration of educational common sense in our great universities. Book jacket.