William Rainey Harper

Lindsey Duda
Brookwood Junior High School, Glenwood

William Rainey Harper was born in New Concord, Ohio, on July 26, 1856. Harper was a child prodigy who graduated from Muskingum College at age fourteen. In 1875, before he turned nineteen, he received his Ph.D. from Yale College. After serving several professorships in his late teens and early twenties, Harper took professorships in Semitic languages at Baptist Union Theological Seminary in Chicago. Harper's love for education helped him create the influential University of Chicago. Without Harper's revolutionary ideas, the university would not be what it is today.

Many people consider Harper to be one of the most exceptional figures in the history of American education. In September 1890 Harper was elected president of the newly founded University of Chicago. He convinced several wealthy citizens to support his plans. In 1890 retail magnate Marshall Field became one of those supporters when he donated a plot of land, and John D. Rockefeller gave $600,000 to launch the school.

From the beginning of his administration, Harper was never able to spend money as freely as he wished. Before construction of the university had begun, Rockefeller had given the University of Chicago two million dollars, and through the years, Rockefeller contributed greatly to the university. Before Rockefeller died in 1937, his donations amounted to $35 million dollars.

Harper sought faculty for the new university from among those scholars with the best reputations in the United States. Harper equipped the university with the keenest and best minds by paying good wages and pledging a freedom of expression. Harper was stubborn and would not take no for an answer. His determination soon paid off, and he convinced some of the best teachers available to take part in his courageous trial in the midwest.

The university opened its doors on October 1, 1892. Instead of opening as a college, it opened as a full-fledged university, which was unusual because a university normally grew out of an existing college.

William Rainey Harper, a tireless advocate of education, was the first president of the University of Chicago.

He declared that his establishment would be essentially a graduate school. He demanded equality of opportunity and treatment for women in the student body as well as for those on the faculty. This was very remarkable for the time because female teachers were practically unknown. Harper also said that varsity sports should be played for health and pleasure, not for the sensational amusement of immense crowds. Harper discarded the previous September-to-June schedule, and installed in its place the first year-round university in the history of the world. Each year, Rockefeller continued to support him fully and pay the immense deficits.

Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed recalled, "I was with him during all the years of his presidency and never saw the slightest indication that he prided himself on his position. So far from having any feeling of exultation, he was much of the time—perhaps I ought to say, most of the time—depressed by the inadequacy of the means at his disposal which he had conceived and never ceased to cherish. The founder of the University poured out his money with unparalleled liberality, but the plans of President Harper for the Great University were so great and expansive that the munificence of one man alone couldn't meet their requirements."

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Harper died of cancer in 1906 at the age of 49, before the medical college at the university had opened. His legacy and memory live on. As one historian concluded, Harper was "a gregarious man with a magnetic personality, he dominated the university like few others, and in the spirit of unity, building a foundation based upon service to the community, to the city, and, by extension, to the world."—[From Paul J. Deegan, University of Chicago; Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed, William Rainey Harper; John Gunther, Chicago Revisited; Illinois Biographical Dictionary; June Skinner Sawyer, Chicago Portraits; Richard J. Storr, Harper's University.]

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