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J O H N
N I LSSO N
3 N O . I 8 7 V O L . I
The University of Utah’s Great Issues Forum, 1952–1974
U H Q
Public Philosophy and the Idea of the University
239
From 1952 to 1974, the University of Utah’s Department of Philosophy collaborated with the Extension Division (now Continuing Education) to assemble the best minds of the local faculty in the Great Issues Forum. In a series of lectures organized around a common philosophical, ethical, or religious topic, each year’s invited participants addressed themes that would have resonated with academics and the general public. Topics for each year rotated and included such earth-shaking titles as “The Nature of Man,” “Man’s Survival,” and “The University in Crisis.” The Forum was initially designed to be engaging and accessible to the average interested layperson and to bridge the gap between the academy and the larger community. Consequently, the lectures were well attended and often broadcast to thousands of listeners and reported in city newspapers, given that they addressed, in the words of philosophy department chair Waldemer P. Read, “questions of general interest and of vital current concern to the public.”1 The Great Issues Forum was the brainchild of Waldemer Read, the protégé of the previous philosophy department chair, Ephraim E. Ericksen, who had studied under John Dewey at the University of Chicago at the height of his power and influence in American philosophical, educational, and reform circles. While Dewey was a confirmed humanist, his pragmatic philosophy was amenable to religious inflections, and it was this compatibility that Ericksen found attractive.2 This ideological constellation would
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