Antioch College will close

by Cliopatria

Yesterday, Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, announced that its Board of Trustees had voted to close the college as of 1 July 2008."Antioch University", a small, dispersed network of profit-making graduate programs and few, if any, tenured faculty positions, will survive, but its historic liberal arts college in Yellow Springs will close. Essentially, the college never recovered from the student strike of 1973.

Antioch's noted former presidents include Horace Mann and Arthur Morgan. Rebecca Pennell, America's first female college professor, taught there, as did Harold Cruse, G. Stanley Hall, jazz musician Cecil Taylor, and ... well ... Ralph Luker. Its graduates of note include Clifford Geertz, Stephen Jay Gould, A. Leon Higginbotham, Coretta Scott King, the AAUP's Cary Nelson, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Rod Serling, and historians such as Peter Irons and David Thelen. Thanks to David Fahey for the tip. See also: Chronicle of Higher Education, Cincinnati Enquirer, Columbus Dispatch, Dayton Daily News and Inside Higher Ed.

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Nonpartisan - 6/13/2007

Oops -- I missed that part in the article. So it was the students who were more violent and destructive at Antioch than at other campuses.

Manan Ahmed - 6/13/2007

I used to go to Antioch parties in the neighborhood. And Yellow Springs is a good community. Sad.

Ralph E. Luker - 6/13/2007

I'm not sure what administrative action is unwarrented, when student strikers pour bags of cement in the waterpipes of a historic building on the campus. Strikers had also firebombed campus buildings.

Nonpartisan - 6/13/2007

Was it student activism that was at fault, or the faulty response of the administration? The article seems to imply that the administration's strikebreaking activities were unusual and unwarranted. After all, this was a time of student strikes in general -- my mother was present for the infamous mid-70's version at Michigan, which was ultimately resolved through the intercession of the university president, something that did not happen at Antioch. After all, enrollments did not crash at most of the other schools following the strikes -- not even, unless I remember wrongly, at Kent State. So what exactly was the difference with Antioch?

Ralph E. Luker - 6/13/2007

Yes, it is a sad day, but No I was not there for the student strike. I taught there in its aftermath. Student enrollments crashed from ca 2000 in 1970 to ca 350 in 1979. By the time I was there, 1991-94, enrollment had struggled up to 600 or so, only to decline to about 400 this past year.
When I was there, faculty members grimly referred to Antioch as "the third world of American higher education." It _is_ grim when there is no budget for guest lectures, concerts, dramatic productions, exhibits, etc. It _is_ grim when the floors in some buildings have simply rotted away and there's no plan to replace them.
There something to be learned from Antioch's celebration of student activism -- when it was a form of student activism that ultimately killed the college. While I was there, the administration finally re-opened a beautiful 19th century brick building that Horace Mann had built. It had been closed for 20 years, since the strike. No sooner was it reopened than someone spray-painted expletives on the soft exterior brick, which was nearly impossible to clean.

Nonpartisan - 6/13/2007

Were you there when the strike was going on?