Through a narrative of the discipline of education at the University of Illinois, this study presents three general and interrelated themes. First, the academic field of education serves a critical role in the construction of democratic publics. It provides a close and tangible link between universities, their educational and research missions, and the public. Their work is on display in the work of hundreds of thousands public schools’ teachers across the nation. As a scholarly discipline, education has been inextricably linked to the fate of public schools, and as thus critical for the perpetuation of democratic life. However, not everyone can agree on just what constitutes “a democratic life.” The term is contested and colleges or schools of education are often the sites where that contest is carried out. The result is that the field of education is only partially in charge of its own destiny, and there are often strong differences over the direction it should take. There are many reasons for this, but the most interesting and the most informative are those differences that entail competing understandings and visions of education itself and of the role of schooling in liberal democracies.