70 • DONNA MARIE TROSTLI and the School in New York City, and by the late ’70s he was ready to take up the task of working within his own professional sphere—that of Columbia Uni­ versity and the world of academia—to bring Rudolf Steiner’s work in the field of education to the attention of the academic community. In March 1979, as part of the 50th Anniversary celebrations of the founding of the Rudolf Steiner School in New York, Dr. Sloan helped to organize a conference on the theme of , which was hosted by Teachers College. Participants included students and faculty from Teachers College as well as parents and teachers from Steiner schools throughout America. Speakers included Henry Barnes, Alan Howard, and John Davy; the texts of their addresses were printed in the Spring 1980 edition of the Teachers College Record under the title, “Waldorf Education: An Introduction.” This first major effort to bring Waldorf education to the attention of the greater educational community met with mixed success: On the one hand, there appeared in the libraries of colleges and universities throughout the country a scholarly, respected educational journal containing ar­ ticles on Waldorf education; and those attending the conference came away with a much clearer idea of what Waldorf schools are and the philosophy of education that underlies them. On the other hand, to quote Sloan: “The scandal continued.” Most professors in the field of education—as in most fields today—are so ensconced in their own specialized niches of study that work outside those interests, especially work of such an apparently generalized nature as Waldorf education, simply does not interest them. The following year Douglas Sloan was the main organizer of a symposium entitled: “Knowledge, Education, and Human Values: Towards the Recovery of Wholeness.” Held in Woodstock, Ver­ mont, in June of 1980 and sponsored by the Kettering Foundation, the symposium brought together fifty participants including philosophers, anthropologists, sociologists, physicists, biologists, and foundation executives to discuss human values in the field of educa­ tion. Again an open forum was created in which Rudolf Steiner’s work, among others, was discussed by professionals concerned about the fragmentation of modern life, and the denial of the spiritual realities which underlie the scientific and technological progress of the modern world. As conference participant later