About the Book
When the founding fathers of the United States inaugurated a system of government that was unprecedented in the modern world, they knew that a functioning democracy required an educated electorate capable of making rational decisions. But who would validate the information that influenced citizens’ opinions? By spotlighting various institutions of learning, George Oberle provides a comprehensive look at how knowledge was created, circulated, and consumed in the early American republic.
Many of the founders, including George Washington, initially favored the creation of a centralized national university to educate Americans from all backgrounds. Over the first half of the nineteenth century, however, politicians moved away from any notion of publicly educated laypeople generating useful knowledge. The federal government ultimately founded the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, to be run by experts only. Oberle’s insightful analysis of the competing ideas over the nature of education offers food for thought as we continue to grapple with a rapidly evolving media landscape amid contested meanings of knowledge, expertise, and the obligations of citizenship.
About the Author
George Oberle is History Librarian at George Mason University, where he has held librarian faculty roles since 2004. He also teaches as an Associate (Term) Professor in the university’s Department of History and Art History. Oberle co-founded and serves as director the Center for Mason Legacies, an interdisciplinary research center chartered by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences in collaboration with University Libraries. Oberle received his Ph.D. in history from George Mason University and pursues research interests including the significance of knowledge creation and dissemination.
Oberle is also active in local, regional, and national history organizations, seeking always to unite academic scholars with their local community counterparts. He serves on the Virginia Forum board of directors, as official historian of the Historical Society of Fairfax County, and as a member of the Southern History Society’s education committee, the Black history committee of the Friends of the Thomas Balch Library. Nationally, he holds memberships in the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic, the Organization of American Historians, and the American Historical Association.