As president of Amherst College from 1912 to 1923, noted educational reformer Alexander Meiklejohn designed and implemented a new curriculum and revitalized the teaching force of the school. At Amherst he helped to determine what the modern liberal arts college would be. Although he brought new purpose to a campus that had fallen deep into the shadows of the burgeoning private and public universities of the late nineteenth century, Meiklejohn was dismissed by Amherst's trustees in an action so steeped in controversy and rumor that the college kept all records of the proceedings sealed for the next sixty years.