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Phi Beta Kappa: The Invention of an Academic Tradition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

G. Kurt Piehler*
Affiliation:
Rutgers University

Extract

The rise of the modern American university between the Civil War and the Great Depression is a familiar story. In this relatively short span of time America acquired a host of universities that offered extensive graduate training, stressed research over teaching, and largely abandoned the prescribed common curriculum in favor of greater individual choice. Some of these new universities, like Chicago, Cornell, and Stanford, were created ex nihilo. Others, like Yale and Princeton, were gradually transformed from small, clerically directed, classically oriented denominational colleges into modern secular universities.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 by the History of Education Society 

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References

1 Hofstadter, Richard, and Smith, Wilson, eds., American Higher Education: A Documentary History, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1961); Rudolph, Frederick, The American College and University: A History (New York, 1965); Laurence R. Veysey, The Emergence of the American University (Chicago, 1965).Google Scholar

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3 See, for example, Robert Bocock, Rituals in Industrial Society: A Sociological Analysis of Ritualism in Modern England (London, 1974); Gillis, John R., For Better, For Worse: British Marriages, 1600 to the Present (New York, 1985); Eric Hobsbawm and Terrence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, Eng., 1983).Google Scholar

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7 Quoted in Hastings, William T., Phi Beta Kappa as a Secret Society with Its Relations to Freemasonry and Antimasonry (Washington, D.C., 1965), 41.Google Scholar

8 McLachlan, James, “The ‘Choice of Hercules': American Student Societies in the Early Nineteenth Century,” in The University in Society, ed. Stone, Lawrence (Princeton, N.J., 1974), 2: 449-94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Hastings, , Secret Society, 111.Google Scholar

10 Ibid., 55, 89-91.Google Scholar

11 Voorhees, Oscar M., The History of Phi Beta Kappa (New York, 1945), chaps. 3-5. John Quincy Adams recalled that one Phi Beta Kappa meeting held in August 1786 at “Freeman, and Little's Chamber” included “Freeman read[ing] a short Dissertation upon the love of our neighbour; Little and Packard [offering] a Forensic on the Question, whether the present scarcity of money in this Commonwealth be advantageous to it. [To this question] Harris and Andrews, were the extempore disputants.” David Grayson Allen et al., eds., The Diary of John Quincy Adams (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), 2: 87.Google Scholar

12 Voorhees, , Phi Beta Kappa, 4247, 109.Google Scholar

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17 Voorhees, , Phi Beta Kappa, 5968. Ill will toward Phi Beta Kappa centered in large measure on the special recognition that the society received from the college administration, as well as from its insistence upon secrecy. At Harvard, the special privileges granted to Phi Beta Kappa provoked considerable debate not only among students, but even among college overseers. Secret societies aroused considerable anxiety within the early republic. During the 1780s, many feared that the secret Society of Cincinnati was attempting to foist an aristocracy upon the newly independent American nation. Some Federalists in the late 1790s and early 1800s argued that certain secret societies, such as errant branches of the Masons and the rumored existence of Jacobin clubs in America, posed a severe threat to the stability of the republic. This attack on secret societies fostered an intense internal debate in the Yale chapter, with some arguing that Phi Beta Kappa should vote itself out of existence because of the threat posed by secret societies. For a discussion of the debate surrounding the Society of Cincinnati see: Merrill Jensen, The New Nation: A History of the United States during the Confederation, 1781–1789 (New York, 1950); Myers, Minor Jr., Liberty without Anarchy: A History of the Society of the Cincinnati (Charlottesville, Va., 1983); and Wallace Evan Davies, Patriotism on Parade: The Story of Veterans’ and Hereditary Organizations, 1783–1900 (Cambridge, Mass., 1955). An examination of the controversy surrounding Phi Beta Kappa and the fear that it possibly threatened the social order can be found in Hastings, Secret Society, 12-42.Google Scholar

18 Phi Beta Kappa Anniversary Meeting Minutes, 28 Aug. 1834, file number HUD 3684.554, Phi Beta Kappa Records, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Mass. (hereafter HU Archives); Voorhees, Phi Beta Kappa, 147-51.Google Scholar

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20 Phi Beta Kappa Anniversary Meeting Minutes, 11 Aug. 1831, 13 Sept. 1831, file number HUD, 3684.554, Phi Beta Kappa Records, HU Archives. See also William Coolidge Lane, ed., Catalogue of the Harvard Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa (Cambridge, Mass., 1912), 152-54.Google Scholar

21 Phi Beta Kappa Anniversary Meeting Minutes, 30 Aug. 1839, file number HUD 3684.554, Phi Beta Kappa Records, HU Archives; Lane, Catalogue, 160.Google Scholar

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23 Voorhees, , Phi Beta Kappa, 128–36, 170-81.Google Scholar

24 Lane, , Catalogue, 174–76; Story, Forging an Aristocracy, 154-55.Google Scholar

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27 Voorhees, , Phi Beta Kappa, 255–56.Google Scholar

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29 Parsons, E. B., Phi Beta Kappa Handbook and General Address Catalogue of the United Chapters (North Adams, Mass., 1900), 68.Google Scholar

30 For example: Edward E. Hale, “A Fossil from the Tertiary,” Atlantic Monthly 44(July 1879): 98106; Bayard Quincy Morgan, ed., Phi Beta Kappa: Alpha of Wisconsin Catalogue (Madison, Wis., 1917).Google Scholar

31 Copeland, Arthur, Men and Days in Phi Beta Kappa (Newark, N.Y., 1907), 2328.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 Axelrod, Alan, ed., The Colonial Revival in America (New York, 1985); Paul Boyer, Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820–1920 (Cambridge, Mass., 1978); David Glassberg, “Public Ritual and Cultural Hierarchy: Philadelphia's Civic Celebrations at the Turn of the Century,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 107(July 1983):421-48; John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism: 1860–1925 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1955); Michael G. Kammen, A Season of Youth: The American Revolution and the Historical Imagination (New York, 1978).Google Scholar

33 Glassberg, “Public Ritual”; Higham, Strangers in the Land; Kammen, A Season of Youth. Google Scholar

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36 Ibid., 27-31.Google Scholar

37 United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa, A Ritual of Phi Beta Kappa, 1913 pamphlet in William Lane's General Correspondence, file number HUD 3684.704, Phi Beta Kappa Records, HU Archives.Google Scholar

38 Ibid. To trace further changes in the initiation ceremony over the course of the twentieth century see: Sixteenth National Council, United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa, A Ritual of Phi Beta Kappa, 1928 pamphlet; and United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa, The Phi Beta Kappa Society Form of Initiation, 1956 pamphlet, both in Records of the Corresponding Secretary, 1934–1960, Phi Beta Kappa Records, Rutgers University Archives, New Brunswick, N.J. (hereafter RU Archives).Google Scholar

39 The Alpha of Massachusetts,” Phi Beta Kappa Key 1(Mar. 1911): 28.Google Scholar

40 Voorhees, , Phi Beta Kappa, 242. See also Chapter Minutes, 1869–1901, Phi Beta Kappa Records, RU Archives; and Historical Volume: The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Alpha of New Jersey of the Phi Beta Kappa Society (New Brunswick, N.J., 1920) in Memorabilia Series, Phi Beta Kappa Records, RU Archives.Google Scholar

41 Parsons, , Handbook, 14, 252.Google Scholar

42 Robson, John W., Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities 19th ed. (Menasha, Wis., 1977).Google Scholar

43 Although Phi Beta Kappa originally began as an all-male fraternity, little significant opposition emerged toward the admission of women as members during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The University of Vermont became the first to admit women as full members and a year later the Wesleyan College chapter decided that gender should not enter into membership decisions. Since the opportunity to belong to Phi Beta Kappa was primarily accorded on the basis of scholastic achievement (i.e., class rank), it became difficult for chapters at coeducational chapters to justify the exclusion of women. Once this precedent had been set, the way was paved for the creation of new chapters at a select group of women's colleges. Vassar was the first women's college to win a charter from the United Chapters, and by 1910, Barnard, Smith, and Mount Holyoke had chapters. The admission of women to Phi Beta Kappa may have been made more acceptable to men, in part, because most chapters were at all-male colleges where Phi Beta Kappa membership could extend only to men by virtue of the makeup of the student body. For further information on the admission of women to Phi Beta Kappa see Voorhees, Phi Beta Kappa, 261-63.Google Scholar

44 William Lane to Henry C. Chiles, 27 July 1912, Chiles, Henry C. to William Lane, 16 Nov. 1915, [William Lane?] to Henry C. Chiles, 19 Nov. 1915, Elmer C. Griffith to William Lane, 26 Nov. 1915, [William Lane] to Elmer C. Griffith, 2 Dec. 1915, [Oscar Harnett?] to William Lane, 3 Dec. 1915, Application for Phi Beta Kappa chapter file, file number HUD 3684.704, Phi Beta Kappa Records, HU Archives.Google Scholar

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46 Voorhees, , Phi Beta Kappa, 285–86.Google Scholar

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48 Voorhees, , Phi Beta Kappa, 317.Google Scholar

49 Ibid., 326-42.Google Scholar

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