¹ Meiklejohn's writings on education, his more radical proposals for reform at Amherst, and his accomplishments at the University of Wisconsin's Experimental College have been influential in the founding and operation of experimental colleges and in curricular reform. See, particularly, Gerald Grant and David Riesman, The Perpetual Dream (Chicago, 1978), 1, 20-21, 43, 45, 49-50, 291n, 369; Frederick Rudolph, Curriculum: A History of the American Undergraduate Course of Study since 1636 (San Francisco, 1977), 237, 276-77.Google Scholar

² Wilson, Douglas C., ed., “The Story in the Meiklejohn Files Part I “ Amherst 35 (Fall 1982): 8–15, 28-51; idem, “The Story in the Meiklejohn Files Part II,” ibid. (Spring 1983): 8-13, 53-57, 63-65. Although the bulk of the papers from the Meiklejohn administration were maintained as part of the open files within the Amherst College Archives, two reports prepared for the board of trustees as well as a variety of personal notes and letters generated during the board's consideration of Meiklejohn's finances and his relations with the Amherst faculty were sealed by the trustees and not reopened for public view until May 1982. The two-part series published in Amherst provides a more detailed and colorful account of the controversy leading to the forced resignation of President Meiklejohn than is presented here. The continuing controversy surrounding the Meiklejohn administration is quite apparent in the letters to the editor that followed the publication of the series. “Letters,” ibid. (Spring 1983): 66-68; “Letters,” ibid. 36 (Summer 1983): 72-75; “Letters,” 36 (Fall/Winter 1983–84): 66-67.Google Scholar

³ LeDuc, Thomas, Piety and Intellect at Amherst College, 1865–1912 (New York, 1969), 4 (quotation), 7, 8; David F. Allmendinger, Jr., Paupers and Scholars: The Transformation of Student Life in Nineteenth-Century New England (New York, 1975), 119.Google Scholar

⁴ Peterson, George E., The New England College in the Age of the University (Amherst, 1964), 69; LeDuc, Piety and Intellect, 23.Google Scholar

⁵ Peterson, , New England College, 126–36; Claude Moore Fuess, Amherst, the Story of a New England College (Boston, 1935), 220-27; LeDuc, Piety and Intellect, 50-61.Google Scholar

⁶ Rudolph, , Curriculum, 172; quotation from Peterson, New England College, 72.Google Scholar

⁷ Peterson, , New England College, 73 (quotation), 75. See also Allmendinger, Paupers and Scholars, for information about the career patterns and economic background of Amherst College students.Google Scholar

⁸ LeDuc, , Piety and Intellect, 108; quotation from Fuess, Amherst, 250. After some uncertain years toward the end of Seelye's administration, during which time the student senate (known as the “Amherst System”) was not taken very seriously by the students, the body assumed powerful proportions with Harlan Fisk Stone, Calvin Coolidge, and Dwight Morrow among the senators. In 1894 the senate took on the faculty and President Merrill Gates in an argument over who had authority to investigate and dispose of a student discipline case (a power granted to the senate under Seelye and reaffirmed only two years earlier by Gates). The battle was fought in the press, among the alumni, and before the student body. The result was an embarrassment to the college and a source of concern among trustees. The senate disbanded itself after losing its case (not to be re-established until Meiklejohn's Committee of Seven), and Gates, who never recovered from the controversy, resigned four years later. Peterson, New England College, 126-34; Rudolph, Curriculum, 163.Google Scholar

⁹ LeDuc, , Piety and Intellect, 138; Fuess, Amherst, 269; Laurence R. Veysey, The Emergence of the American University (Chicago, 1965), 204; Rudolph, Curriculum, 239.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Baab, Lawrence et al., Education at Amherst Reconsidered: The Liberal Studies Program (Amherst, 1978), 12; Interview with D. S. Otis, Dec. 1984. (Mr. Otis, a 1920 graduate of Amherst and a member of the faculty of Meiklejohn's Experimental College, described these men as “very definitely upper-class scholars.” As to Meiklejohn's relationship to those men, Mr. Otis commented, “How could he persuade some of those old boys? They weren't persuadable; [they were] dyed in the wool conservatives”); Fuess, Amherst, 271; and quotation from Amherst Graduates’ Quarterly, June 1912, cited in Fuess, Amherst, 275.Google Scholar

¹¹ “The ‘85 Address together with Some Newspaper and Magazine Articles Discussing the Amherst Idea,” Class Material, 1885, Amherst College Archives.Google Scholar

¹² Ibid.Google Scholar

¹³ “The Reply of the Trustees to the Class of Eighteen Eighty Five,” 1911, Class Material, 1885, Amherst College Archives.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Fuess, , Amherst, 278, 307. When the faculty was not consulted in the process of seeking a new president, they circulated a petition recommending alumnus Frederick J. E. Woodbridge, a member of Columbia's faculty, as their principal choice, as it was already understood that Dean George Olds was not a candidate. The board did extend an offer to Rush Rhees, also an alumnus, then president of the University of Rochester, who declined. Meiklejohn was selected over several other alumni nominees. Stanley King, A History of the Endowment of Amherst College (Amherst, 1950), 129.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Stokes Brown, Cynthia, ed., Alexander Meiklejohn, Teacher of Freedom (Berkeley, 1981), 5; Veysey, Emergence of the American University, 208.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Brown, , Alexander Meiklejohn, 5, 7–8; Veysey, Emergence of the American University, 410; Richard Hofstadter and Walter P. Metzger, The Development of Academic Freedom in the United States (New York, 1955), 421-22.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Bronson, Walter C., History of Brown University, 1764–1914 (Providence, R.I., 1914), 484.Google Scholar

¹⁸ “Some Addresses Delivered at Amherst College Commencement Time 1923,” Alumni of Amherst College, 1924, Amherst College Archives.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Meiklejohn, Alexander, Freedom and the College (New York, 1923), 170.Google Scholar

²⁰ Ibid., 172.Google Scholar

²¹ Ibid., 196, 178, 188, 184.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²² Ibid., 184, 185, 186.Google Scholar

²³ Notes of Alexander Meiklejohn, ca. 1912, Alexander Meiklejohn Papers, Amherst College Archives; Meiklejohn, Freedom and the College, 186.Google Scholar

²⁴ Meiklejohn, , Freedom and the College, 182.Google Scholar

²⁵ Ibid., 177.Google Scholar

²⁶ Seelye Bixler, Julius, “Alexander Meiklejohn and the Making of the Amherst Mind,” Amherst 25 (Spring 1973): 2.Google Scholar

²⁷ Trustee Minutes, Nov. 1912, Meiklejohn Papers.Google Scholar

²⁸ Arthur Rounds et al., “The Report of the Special Committee,” 1923, Trustee Material Concerning Alexander Meiklejohn, Amherst College Archives.Google Scholar

²⁹ Trustee Minutes, 1914, Meiklejohn Papers.Google Scholar

³⁰ Meiklejohn, Alexander, The Liberal College (Boston, 1920), 135. The only course similar to Meiklejohn's “Social and Economic Institutions” before World War I was probably the University of Rochester's freshman course. Columbia's first survey course in contemporary civilization began as an outgrowth of the War Aims course of the Student Army Training Corps curriculum of World War I. After the war such courses appeared on many campuses. Rudolph, Curriculum, 237.Google Scholar

³¹ Meiklejohn, , Liberal College, 138. Of note in this version of the curriculum is the absence of any study in the classics.Google Scholar

³² Ibid., 142.Google Scholar

³³ Ibid., 149, 150.Google Scholar

³⁴ Ibid., 152.Google Scholar

³⁵ Ibid., 153-55. This proposal laid the groundwork for the curriculum of the two-year Experimental College Meiklejohn founded and led at the University of Wisconsin from 1927 to 1932.Google Scholar

³⁶ Ibid., 161.Google Scholar

³⁷ Notes of Alexander Meiklejohn, ca. 1912, Meiklejohn Papers; “The ‘85 Address.”Google Scholar

³⁸ Brown, Alexander Meiklejohn, 15. Amherst paid pensions from the current fund of the college, although it did become eligible for the Carnegie plan, which until 1918 paid retired professors at the rate of 60 percent of their salary at age sixty (Rudolph, Curriculum, 223). In 1918 the terms of the plan changed and Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association was established, with a co-payment plan under which professors paid in up to 5 percent of their salaries with a matching contribution from the college. In November 1920 the trustees of Amherst first considered the establishment of a permanent fund to pay retiring professors at the rate of 50 percent of their salary at retirement if not eligible to receive Carnegie funds. Those receiving Carnegie funds would be paid the difference of the Carnegie payment and their salary upon retirement (Trustee Minutes, Nov. 1920, Amherst College Archives). It was not until 1940 that Amherst finally established a plan based on per capita contributions to the fund. King, Endowment of Amherst College, 169-70.Google Scholar

³⁹ Fuess, , Amherst, 311; Wilson, “Meiklejohn Files, Part II,” 10.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Trustee Minutes, May 1913, Meiklejohn Papers (first quotation); Alexander Meiklejohn, Untitled Document (apparently the presentation made to the trustees at the May 1913 meeting), Amherst College Archives (second and third quotations). The salary of department heads at Dartmouth was $3,000. Leon Burr Richardson, History of Dartmouth College (Hanover, N.H., 1932), 756.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Quotation from Meiklejohn to G. A. Plimpton, 2 Nov. 1914, Meiklejohn Papers; Trustee Minutes, Nov. 1914 and 1915, ibid.Google Scholar

⁴² Table of Faculty Appointments, ca. 1921, Amherst College Archives; Robert A. McCaughey, “The Transformation of American Academic Life: Harvard University, 1821–1892,” Perspectives in American History 8 (1974): 246.Google Scholar

⁴³ Trustee Minutes, May 1917, Meiklejohn Papers.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Martin Lipset, Seymour and Riesman, David, Education and Politics at Harvard: Two Essays Prepared for the Carnegie Committee on Higher Education (New York, 1975), 140. Laski was the center of serious controversy as a faculty member at Harvard resulting from his left-wing politics, particularly his defense of the Boston policemen's strike. David Riesman to Robert Brennan, 9 Feb. 1984; Riesman notes that in addition to these well-known left-leaning theorists, two of Meiklejohn's permanent recruits, Walter Stewart and Walton Hamilton, were considered to be very liberal. The reactions of alumni to the presence of such men on the faculty is described briefly by Wilson (“Meiklejohn Files, Part II,” 13); Alexander Meiklejohn, “The Measure of a College,” Amherst Graduates’ Quarterly 22 (Feb. 1923): 90.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ First quotation from Robert Morss Lovett, “Meiklejohn of Amherst,” New Republic, 4 July 1923, 146; second quotation from Walter Lippmann, “The Fall of President Meiklejohn,” New York World, 24 June 1923; Meiklejohn to William J. Newlin, 30 Mar. 1922, Meiklejohn Papers.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Fuess, , Amherst, 316–17; Brown, Alexander Meiklejohn, 15; Wilson, “Meiklejohn Files, Part II,” 13. Harvard began military training as early as 1915, two years before Amherst. Lipset and Riesman, Education and Politics at Harvard, 136.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ LeDuc, , Piety and Intellect, 133; first quotation from Meiklejohn, “Measure of a College,” 88; second quotation from Alexander Meiklejohn, “What Are the College Games For?” Atlantic Monthly 130 (Nov. 1922): 671; Malcolm P. Sharp, Alfred B. Stanford, and Theodore Ainsworth Green, “Statement to the Special Committee of the Board of Trustees,” 9 June 1923, Meiklejohn Papers.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Meiklejohn, , “Measure of a College,” 90; Lovett, “Meiklejohn at Amherst,” 147.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Wilson, , “Meiklejohn Files, Part II,” 11.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Meiklejohn, , Freedom and the College, 135; Terry Y. Allen, “Guichard Parris's Half Century with the Schomburg,” Amherst 40 (Winter 1987): 14.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Peterson, , New England College, 126–34; Fuess, Amherst, 220-22.Google Scholar

⁵² Wilson, , “Meiklejohn Files, Part I,” 12. Meiklejohn's salary was both for his position as president and as professor of philosophy; the president's house was given rent-free, and the college carried its expenses. Trustee Minutes, June 1911, Meiklejohn Papers. The treasurer's figures for 1920/21 show an allocation to the president's office of $3,116 (1984 equivalent $17,200) for entertainment and $1,742 (1984 equivalent $9,615) for travel. President William DeWitt Hyde's salary at Bowdoin College (combined for the office of president and his professorship) was $4,000 in 1909 (1984 equivalent $45,935) and increased to $5,000 in 1915 (1984 equivalent $51,493). In 1920 the president's salary was increased to $6,000 (1984 equivalent $31,282) and in 1923 to $7,000 (1984 equivalent $27,319). Louis Hatch reports that although the president's house was, in principle, provided by the college, President Hyde did at some points pay rent to the college. Louis C. Hatch, The History of Bowdoin College (Portland, Me., 1927), 215. The salary of the president at Harvard University for 1914 is listed as $6,000 (1984 equivalent $64,271); no additional funds appear to have been allocated for entertainment, although it is unclear whether this is the only money that President A. Lawrence Lowell received for his services. “Reports of the President and the Treasurer of Harvard College, 1912–13, Treasurer's Statement,” 20 Apr. 1914, Official Register of Harvard University, vol. 11, no. 1, part 8,Google Scholar

⁵³ Quotation from Wilson, , “Meiklejohn Files, Part I,” 12. (This observation was shared by D. S. Otis in his interview.) Wilson also documents the extraordinarily high cost of utility service at the president's house. Some $1,000 was paid by the college in 1921 (1984 equivalent $5,846), at least double the expenses for a typical household of the size. Although this did not contribute to Meiklejohn's high expenditures, it does suggest that the household was not a thrifty one. Frederick S. Allis, Jr., “Letters,” Amherst 36 (Fall/Winter 1983–84): 67.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Wilson, , “Meiklejohn Files, Part I,” 13, 15.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Wilson, , “Meiklejohn Files, Part I,” 15; Amherst College Annual Budget 1922–23, Amherst College Archives; King, Endowment of Amherst College, 234. The deficit reported in the official budget was $84,911.91, and slightly less in Stanley King's account at $81,734.27. However staggering this figure may have been, it was probably not attributable to anything Meiklejohn did. Under Harris the college ran a deficit in all but three years. The deficit continued under Meiklejohn, and turned to a surplus following the centennial fund raising. The Olds administration managed a single year of surplus and the tendency to run in the red was unchecked until the college endowment was increased by $7 million under Presidents Arthur Stanley Pease and Stanley King. It seems fair to argue that the real cause of the deficit lay not in the spending habits of the Meiklejohn administration, but in the small size of Amherst's endowment.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Kennedy, Gail et al., Education at Amherst: The New Program (New York, 1955), 99–101.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Rounds, , “Report of the Special Committee,” 118.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Wilson, , “Meiklejohn Files, Part II,” 16.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Rounds, , “Report of the Special Committee,” 86, 8–9, 16.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Allis, Frederick S., “Excerpts from Memorandum Written in 1923 or 1924,” Amherst College Archives, 3–5; Wilson, “Meiklejohn Files, Part II,” 10-11, 13.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Price, Lucien, Prophets Unawares: The Romance of an Idea (New York, 1924), 130; Editorial, The Amherst Student, 16 June 1923, 3.Google Scholar

⁶² Woodrow Wilson to Meiklejohn, 25 June 1923, Meiklejohn Papers; “An Open Letter to Dwight Morrow,” New Republic, 25 July 1923, 222. This letter does not appear to have been written by Felix Frankfurter as has been stated elsewhere (Wilson, “Meiklejohn Files, Part II,” 65). Frankfurter apparently read the letter and commented to Amherst's Professor Gaus, “I assumed you liked the N. R.'s open letter to Morrow as much as I did.” (Frankfurter to John M. Gaus, 22 July 1923, Meiklejohn Papers.)Google Scholar

⁶³ “Some Addresses delivered at Amherst Commencement Time 1923,” 50.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Lippmann, , “Fall of President Meiklejohn”; “An Open Letter to Dwight Morrow,” 221; Willard L. Sperry to Meiklejohn, 2 July 1923, cited in Brown, Alexander Meiklejohn, 13-14.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Price, , Prophets Unawares, 44–45 (first quotation); “Survey of Conditions at Amherst Shows Student Morale at High Level,” The Amherst Student, 16 June 1923, 1 (second quotation). Calculations of author from Table of Course Enrollments, 1920–21, Meiklejohn Papers. Although the table shows figures for each faculty member, it does not divide enrollments by course, and thus it is not possible to determine how much of this effect is due to curricular requirements. Since Meiklejohn tended to promote and reward his appointees rapidly, it seems unlikely that as a group, they would have been instructing significantly fewer elective courses than their more senior colleagues, and thus at least some of the discrepancy in class size must be attributed to the greater popularity of their courses.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Hamilton, Walton, “Reply to Inquiry of Trustees Regarding Instruction,” 30 June 1922, Amherst College Archives; Meiklejohn, “Measure of a College,” 87.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Price, , Prophets Unawares, 9.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ “3,” The Nation, 4 July 1923, 5; Fuess, Amherst, 314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶⁹ Baab, et al. Education at Amherst Reconsidered vii; Pouncey, Peter R., “An Amherst Education: The President's Report to the Trustees,” 11 Apr. 1987, 5.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Meiklejohn, , Liberal College 9.Google Scholar