Radical Roots of Pitzer: Part 1

“What were your expectations and preconceptions of Pitzer before you came here?” This is one of the 21 questions that Pitzer seniors have been asked since 1968 when the Pitzer History Project began interviewing students nearing graduation. For 50 years, student responses have been surprisingly consistent, along the lines of: “I thought there would be a lot of freedom at Pitzer and that it wouldn’t be your traditional college or your traditional college education.”

The documents in the Pitzer College Archives, which picks up where the Pitzer History Project left off, make it clear that faculty, staff, and trustees have had a similar—and steadfast—impression of the College: in addition to being an exceptional college that’s part of a consortium of highly respected educational institutions, Pitzer is more progressive, experimental, hippie, disruptive, unruly, rebellious and unconventional than other colleges in Claremont and around the country. How do these perceptions emerge?

In an attempt to answer this question, the Pitzer College Archives mounted The Radical Roots of Pitzer, an exhibition that explores the principles, attitudes, and aspirations underlying these ideas about the College. Part One explores the development of Pitzer’s institutional and educational character. The remaining parts will delve into the roots of Pitzer’s Core Values:  Environmental Sustainability, Social Responsibility, Intercultural Understanding, Interdisciplinary Learning, and Student Engagement.

... [Pitzer] understands the deadening influence of prejudice and fear. Its purpose as a college is to inspire the discovery and the dissemination of truth, in a spirity of free and responsible inquiry.

—Robert J. Bernard

Robert James Bernard (1894–1981) 
Founding Chairman of Pitzer’s Board of Trustees

Born in Collinwood, Ohio, Robert James Bernard attended Colorado College for a year before his family moved to Hollywood in 1914 and he enrolled in Pomona College as a sophomore majoring in English.   After graduating in 1917 he was appointed assistant to the president at Pomona College by President James A. Blaisdell. As assistant to the president, Bernard visited 20 colleges and universities to research ideas to help formulate The Claremont Colleges Group Plan.  In 1925 Bernard was appointed secretary of The Claremont Colleges and filed its Articles of Incorporation, which marked the beginning of The Claremont Colleges Group Plan.  Over nearly 60 years, Bernard saw the evolution of this idea grow from a single institution (Pomona College, 1887) to a group of six (Claremont Graduate School  [now University], 1925; Scripps College, 1926; Claremont Men’s [now McKenna] College, 1946; Harvey Mudd College, 1955; Pitzer College, 1963).

...a marvelous atmosphere of anticipation, innocence, idealism and general pandemonium.

—John W. Atherton

John W. Atherton (1916–2001)
Founding President of Pitzer College

Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, John W. Atherton was an English professor and a poet who studied with Robert Frost at Amherst College. He served in the Navy as a torpedo and gunnery officer during World War II and then went on to the University of Chicago where he received his PhD in literature.  Before taking on the job of Pitzer’s founding president, he taught English and served as dean of faculty at Claremont Men’s (now McKenna) College.  Atherton painted, collected art and wrote poetry and short stories that were published in several anthologies, as well as magazines such as Saturday Review, The New Yorker and Yale Review. He left Pitzer in 1970 to return to teaching. 

If Pitzer's brief life has shown us anything, it has shown us that genuine education—education that can bring concerned intelligence to bear on the ever-present forces of bigotry, racism, ignorance and repression—can only occur in an open community which encourages free inquiry and stimulates individual development and social responsibility.

—John W. Atherton, 1970

The educational objective of Pitzer College is a humanely educated graduate who will be able to take her place in professional, community, or family life with competence, wisdom and grace. A liberal education is one designed to produce just such a graduate through a true liberation of the mind. Knowledge for its own sake, a constant search for principles, freedom from bias, prejudice and fear—all these have long been recognized as the signs of a liberal education. It is at the same time the most practical of all educations in that it never stultifies or stops, but grows and deepens to meet new situations with courage and dignity.

—Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) Report, 1964

Shift in educational objectives away from "traditional model of women's education" and toward emphasis on "self-knowledge," social sciences, and educational innovation: "The educational objective of Pitzer College will be fulfilled in a graduate who combines self-knowledge and independence of judgment with a broad awareness of the world and a mastery of a particular discipline or field of knowledge"

—Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) Report, 1973

Each committee will have a chairman elected annually from among its members. The post of chairman will amount to little more than that of meeting-convener.

—Master Plan Committee, November 11, 1965

It was unanimously agreed that EVERYONE CANNOT DO EVERYTHING AT PITZER ANYMORE!

—Faculty Executive Committee Meeting Minutes, June 9, 1965