If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to [email protected]. Since the presidency of William Rainey Harper, the University of Chicago has cultivated a powerful and distinct identity marked by intellectual rigor, merit, and free debate. In this talk based on his forthcoming book, The University of Chicago: A History (University of Chicago Press), dean John Boyer, AM’69, PhD’75, shows that this identity is profoundly interwoven with the University’s history—a history that is unique in the annals of American higher education. John W. Boyer, the Martin A. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of History, became dean of the College in 1992 and was reappointed to a fifth term in 2012. Boyer has served as an editor of the Journal of Modern History since 1980. In 1992 and 1993 he was acting dean of the Division of Social Sciences. He was also chair of the Council on Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences from 1986 to 2009. He regularly teaches European Civilization in the College, as well as courses on modern European history, the Habsburg Empire, and modern Germany.