Introduction

In its most basic sense, dark academe is simply a term that can be used to refer to higher education carried out in dark times in support of dreadful ends. In the twentieth century, for example, there was no darker period for academe than the militarization of higher education in Nazi Germany. During this period, says Professor A. Wolf in Higher Education in Nazi Germany: Or Education for World-Conquest (1944),But to term this period of higher education in Germany dark academe does not exhaust its meaning. Nor does it imply that all variations of the term need to be associated with world conquest, fascism, and war. Rather, its use here in the context of higher education in Nazi Germany is merely to point out one of the more extreme and obvious connotations of the term—and to start the process of thinking through the range of meanings associable with dark academe.