The University and the People: Envisioning American Higher Education in an Era of Populist Protest

2. Scaling the Gilded Halls of the University: Populism and Campus Politics

2 Scaling the Gilded Halls of the University Populism and Campus Politics The Populist movement celebrated the virtue of citizens who hailed from outside of privileged circles. The Nebraska Independent, for instance, paid tribute to members of the hardscrabble “lower classes,” who not only produced the nation’s wealth and defended its borders, but also taught themselves poetry, science, and philosophy.1 Disturbed by this combination of “popular contempt for higher education and . . . popular pride in the self-made man,” University of North Carolina (UNC) President Edwin Alderman worried that Populist legislators might starve his institution of public funds.2 Indeed, some Populists argued that the movement’s informal educational network should supplant established colleges. Yet anti-elitist skepticism did not blind all supporters of Farmers’ Alliances or People’s Parties to the possibility that universities could promote egalitarian social reform. A segment of the movement augmented the Grange’s early advocacy for accessible and practical state colleges. Compared with their predecessors in the Grange, academic Populists were empowered by an even more ambitious political coalition. This chapter begins by surveying Populist interventions at universities in North Carolina, Kansas, and Nebraska—the three states where the movement won its greatest political victories. While Populist politicians often relied on alliances with one of the two major parties, the movement still gained a substantial degree of influence within institutional governing boards and legislatures in these states. 35 The second half of this chapter argues that these takeovers were not merely guided by ignorance or bitterness. Populist editors, trustees, faculty, and politicians believed that state universities could empower the producing classes. Many of these Populists were wealthy, politically connected, and college educated. Nevertheless, they helped lead a mass movement comprised of supporters who possessed less formal education, on average, than members of the Democratic or Republican Parties. Academic Populists sought to persuade the movement’s rank and file that college did not necessarily alienate young people from the wholesomeness of the farm or the workshop. Despite indulging in some demagogic criticism of college snobbery, a number of Populists declared that higher education could prepare the children of farmers and laborers to advance community interests. While the movement sponsored informal education through lectures, newspapers, and local meetings, academic Populists also sought to boost college enrollments. These Populists occasionally advocated for increasing the higher education of rural women, in particular. Yet white Populists typically ignored or endorsed racial barriers to college. Severely limited by this bigotry, Populism promoted a radical, yet incomplete, vision of public higher education. Populism on Campus in North Carolina, Kansas, and Nebraska Populists attempted to bring state colleges and universities into greater conformity with the movement’s ideals. These intentions emerged most clearly in North Carolina, Kansas, and Nebraska, where academic Populists seized control of public institutions of higher education. In North Carolina, Populist pressure was instrumental to the founding of the state’s agricultural and mechanical college. Impoverished and embroiled in partisan struggle following the Civil War, UNC closed in 1871 and reopened in 1876 under the leadership of President Kemp Plummer Battle, scion of a prominent piedmont family. Although Battle directed additional resources toward courses in botany, mineralogy, and chemistry, disenchanted farmers noted the lack of applied agricultural training and questioned whether UNC merely provided “rich men’s sons” with the opportunity to perfect their aristocratic airs. One farmer accused Battle of being a pompous “humbug” and acting like an “uncrowned king.”3 UNC faced mounting criticism, especially from citizens dissatisfied with Battle’s allocation of the proceeds of the Morrill Act land grant.4 36 Scaling the Gilded Halls of the University E This discontent coalesced around a campaign for a separate state college of agriculture and mechanic arts. Most accounts of the founding of this school focus on a group of young professionals who called themselves the Watauga Club. Including figures such as Charles Dabney, Josephus Daniels, Charles McIver, and Walter Hines Page, the club epitomized the “New South” vision of economic development. Frustrated with the leadership of the Confederate generation, whom they denigrated as “fossils” and “mummies,” the Wataugans lobbied the state legislature of 1885 to charter an industrial school dedicated to training engineers and manufacturers (the bill’s sponsor, Thomas Dixon, Jr., would later write The Clansman, a white supremacist novel that inspired the film Birth of a Nation). Although the Wataugans modeled their school on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, they included...