The story
Founded by Holland Nimmons McTyeire in 1873.1
History
Founding and early years
In the years before the American Civil War of 1861–1865, the Methodist Episcopal Church South had been considering the creation of a regional university for the training of ministers in a location central to its congregations. Following lobbying by Nashville bishop Holland Nimmons McTyeire, church leaders voted to found "The Central University of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South" in Nashville in 1872. However, lack of funds and the ravaged state of the Reconstruction Era South delayed the opening of the college.
The following year, McTyeire stayed at the New York City residence of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt's second wife, Frank Armstrong Crawford Vanderbilt (1839–1885), was a cousin of McTyeire's wife, Amelia Townsend McTyeire (1827–1891), and both women were from Mobile, Alabama. Cornelius Vanderbilt, the wealthiest man in the United States at the time, had been planning to establish a university on Staten Island, New York. However, McTyeire convinced him to donate $500,000 to endow Central University in order to "contribute to strengthening the ties which should exist between all sections of our common country".
Vanderbilt eventually increased the endowment to $1 million (roughly $27 million in 2025), and though he never expressed any desire that the university be named after him, McTyeire and his fellow trustees rechristened the school in the Spring of 1873 in his honor. They acquired land from Confederate Congressman Henry S. Foote, who had built Old Central, a house still standing on campus.
The first building, Main Building, later known as Kirkland Hall, was designed by William Crawford Smith, and its construction began in 1874. In the fall of 1875, about 200 students enrolled at Vanderbilt, and in October the university was dedicated. Bishop McTyeire was named chairman of the Board of Trust for life by Vanderbilt as a stipulation of his endowment. McTyeire named Landon Garland (1810–1895), his mentor from Randolph-Macon College, as chancellor. Garland shaped the school's structure and hired the school's faculty. Most of this faculty left after disputes with Bishop McTyeire, including over pay rates. When the first fraternity chapter, Phi Delta Theta, was established on campus in 1876, it was shut down by the faculty, only to be reestablished as a secret society in 1877. In 1880, Old Gym, a Victorian building designed by Peter J. Williamson, was completed and became the university's first gymnasium. By 1883, the Board of Trust passed a resolution allowing fraternities on campus, and more chapters were established in 1884.
Following the Tennessee Centennial and International Exposition, a statue of Cornelius Vanderbilt, designed by Italian sculptor Giuseppe Moretti, was moved from the grounds of the Parthenon to the Vanderbilt campus.
In 1905, Main Building (Kirkland Hall), which originally had two Victorian towers, burnt down and was rebuilt in an Italianate design with a single 170-foot tower after the university received donations totaling over $50,000. There is speculation that the school initially intended to rebuild both towers of the original Kirkland Hall but lacked the funds to do so.
Connections to slavery
Many of the university's early leaders had prominent ties to slavery and the Confederacy before the Civil War. Frank Vanderbilt was "a Confederate sympathizer" during the Civil War. McTyeire was born into a slave-owning family and authored an essay in favor of slavery. Garland owned "up to 60 slaves" before the Civil War.
One of the founding trustees, Hezekiah William Foote, was a Confederate veteran and the owner of four plantations in Mississippi, including Mount Holly. The Treasurer of the Board of Trust from 1872 to 1875, Alexander Little Page Green, whose portrait hangs in Kirkland Hall, was a Methodist preacher and a former slave owner. His son-in-law, Robert A. Young, was a Methodist minister who served as the Financial Secretary on the Board of Trust from 1874 to 1882, retiring from the board in 1902. The Elliston family, who owned slaves, donated some of their Burlington Plantation, in one of the first expansions of the campus.
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Split with the Methodist Church
During the first 40 years, the Board of Trust, and therefore the university, was under the control of the General Conference (the governing body) of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Tension grew between the university administration and the Conference over the future of the school, particularly over the methods by which members of the Vanderbilt Board of Trust would be chosen, and the extent that non-Methodists could teach at the school.
Conflicts escalated after James H. Kirkland was appointed chancellor in 1893. Then the Southern Methodist Church congregations raised just $50,000 in a campaign to raise $300,000.
Meanwhile, the Board of Trust voted to limit Methodist representation on the board to just five bishops. Former faculty member and bishop Elijah Hoss led a group attempting to assert Methodist control. In 1910, the board refused to seat three Methodist bishops. The Methodist Church took the issue to court and won at the local level. On March 21, 1914, the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled that the Commodore, and not the Methodist Church, was the university's founder and that the board could therefore seat whomever it wished. The General Conference in 1914 voted 151 to 140 to sever its ties with Vanderbilt; it also voted to establish a new university, Southern Methodist University, and to greatly expand Emory University.
Colonel Edmund William Cole, the treasurer of the Board of Trust, was a Confederate veteran and a railroad executive. He is the namesake of the annual Cole Lecture; his marble bust and his wife's portrait can be seen in Kirkland Hall. His son, Whitefoord Russell Cole, who was the chairman of the Board of Trust from 1915 to 1934, defended Chancellor Kirkland's decision to split with the Methodist Church. He is the namesake of Cole Hall, completed in 1949.
1920s through World War II
In the 1920s and 1930s, Vanderbilt University hosted two partly overlapping groups of scholars who had a large impact on American thought and letters: the Fugitives and the Agrarians. Meanwhile, Frank C. Rand, who served as the President and later Chairman of the International Shoe Company, donated US$150,000 to the university in 1925; Rand Hall was subsequently named for him.
In 1928, the construction of three more buildings was completed: Garland Hall, named for Chancellor Landon Garland; Buttrick Hall, named for Wallace Buttrick of the General Education Board; and Calhoun Hall, named for William Henry Calhoun, a silversmith and Odd Fellows Grand Master.
In 1933, the United Daughters of the Confederacy donated $50,000 (roughly $925,166 in 2015 dollars) for the construction of Confederate Memorial Hall, designed by architect Henry C. Hibbs. It was completed in 1935.
In the 1930s, Ernest William Goodpasture and his colleagues in the School of Medicine invented methods for cultivating viruses and rickettsiae in fertilized chicken eggs. This work made possible the production of vaccines against chicken pox, smallpox, yellow fever, typhus, Rocky mountain spotted fever and other diseases caused by agents that only propagate in living cells. Alfred Blalock, Professor of Surgery, and his assistant Vivien Thomas identified a decrease in blood volume and fluid loss outside the vascular bed as a key factor in traumatic shock and pioneered the use of replacement fluids for its treatment. This treatment saved countless lives in World War II, during which Vanderbilt was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a Navy commission.
German biophysicist Max Delbrück joined the Department of Physics in 1940, and in the following year, he met Italian microbiologist Salvador Luria. In 1942, they published on bacterial resistance to virus infection mediated by random mutation. The culminating Luria–Delbrück experiment, also called the Fluctuation Test, demonstrated that Darwin's theory of natural selection acting on random mutations applies to bacteria as well as to more complex organisms. The 1969 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to both scientists.
Radioactivity experiments
Shortly after the war, from 1945 to 1947, researchers at Vanderbilt University conducted an experiment funded by the Rockefeller Foundation where they gave 800 pregnant women radioactive iron without their consent, being told that they were receiving "vitamin drinks" that would improve the health of babies. Four of the women's babies died from cancer as result of the experiment, and the women suffered from rashes, bruises, hair/tooth loss, anemia, and cancer. In a lawsuit the women received $9.1 million from Vanderbilt University and $900,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1998.
1950s and 1960s
In the early 1950s, some of the first women graduated as engineers. Women's rights advocate Maryly Van Leer Peck graduated as the first chemical engineer in 1951 after not being able to study this field at Georgia Tech where her father was president. In 1953, Chancellor Branscomb orchestrated admission of the first African American student to Vanderbilt, in the School of Divinity. In 1960, under intense pressure from the Vanderbilt Board of Trust, especially James G. Stahlman, a Trustee and the influential editor of the local newspaper, Branscomb expelled Divinity student James Lawson. Lawson was a Congress of Racial Equality leader who organized sit-ins in defiance of Nashville's segregation laws. A dozen faculty members resigned in protest. Branscomb later re-examined his decision, regretting he did not consider referring it to committee to delay action for three months until Lawson's graduation. The school was placed on probation for a year by the American Association of Theological Schools, and the power of trustees was curtailed. The university took Stahlman's $5 million donation in 1972–1973, and named a professorship in his honor. In 2005, Lawson was re-hired as a Distinguished University Professor for the 2006–2007 academic year. He was named a Distinguished Alumnus for his achievements.
In May 1962 the Board of Trustees approved a recommendation from Chancellor Branscomb to admit African Americans in all of the university's educational schools. The first black undergraduates entered the school in the fall of 1964. The university drew national attention in 1966 when it recruited Perry Wallace, the first African American to play varsity basketball in the Southeastern Conference (SEC). Wallace, from Nashville, played varsity basketball for Vanderbilt from 1967 to 1970, and faced considerable opposition from segregationists when playing at other SEC venues. In 2004, a student-led drive to retire Wallace's jersey finally succeeded.
In 1964, Vanderbilt held its first IMPACT Symposium, which has since become a university tradition of hosting speakers in a multi-day annual symposium to discuss current events and topics of a controversial nature. Participants have included Martin Luther King Jr., Allen Ginsberg, Stokely Carmichael, Strom Thurmond, Robert F. Kennedy, Margaret Thatcher, Madeleine Albright, Vicente Fox, Ehud Barak, and multiple Presidents of the United States.
1970s to present
In March 1978, Vanderbilt hosted the South African tennis team in Memorial Gymnasium for the Davis Cup. The match was disrupted by anti-apartheid protesters who chanted "Don't play with apartheid", and a copy editor for The Tennessean was removed by police.
In 1979, Vanderbilt acquired Peabody College, then called the "George Peabody College for Teachers", residing on 53 acres adjacent to the university. Peabody College traces its history to the 1785 Davidson Academy.
In the early 1980s, Vanderbilt University was an investor the Corrections Corporation of America prior to its IPO. The company was co-founded by Thomas W. Beasley, a Vanderbilt Law School alumnus who was honored with a Distinguished Alumnus Award.
In 1989, the university began offering Posse Foundation scholarships to groups of promising young leaders from urban backgrounds to increase their share of diverse students. By 1995, 4.23% of the undergraduate student body was African-American.
In 2001, the university determined to remodel the undergraduate experience by creating an academic residential college system. Since then Vanderbilt has been constructing new buildings and renovating existing structures to support the college system.
In 2002, the university decided to rename Confederate Memorial Hall, a residence hall on the Peabody campus to Memorial Hall. Nationwide attention resulted, in part due to a lawsuit by the Tennessee chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The Davidson County Chancery Court dismissed the lawsuit in 2003, but the Tennessee Court of Appeals ruled in May 2005 that the university must pay damages based on the present value of the United Daughters of the Confederacy's contribution if the inscription bearing the name "Confederate Memorial Hall" was removed from the building or altered. The Court of Appeals' decision has been critiqued by legal scholars. In late July 2005, the university announced that although it had officially renamed the building, and all university publications and offices will refer to it solely as Memorial Hall, the university would neither appeal the matter further, nor remove the inscription and pay damages. In August 2016, the university agreed to remove the word "Confederate" from the building after "anonymous donors" donated $1.2 million to repay the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
In 2009, Vanderbilt instituted a no-loan policy. The policy states that any student granted admission and a need-based aid package will have an award that includes no student loans. Following this, in 2015, Vanderbilt implemented Opportunity Vanderbilt, which committed the university to need-blind admissions, meeting 100% of demonstrated financial need of admitted students, and including only grants in awards.
In 2011, the Oakland Institute exposed a university investment in EMVest Asset Management, a private equity firm "accused of 'land grabbing,' or taking over agricultural land used by local communities through exploitative practices for large-scale commercial export farming in five sub-Saharan African countries. The revelation led to student protests in 2012. By 2013, Vanderbilt administrators had divested from EMVest.
In 2012, Vanderbilt built Elliston Hall in honor of Elizabeth Boddie Elliston of the Burlington Plantation.
In 2015, Vanderbilt opened a new innovation center, the Wond'ry, as part of its Academic Strategic Plan. The three-story, 13,000-square foot building is meant to serve as an interdisciplinary hub of knowledge for the Vanderbilt community, serving as the location of hackathons, partnerships with the Nashville Entrepreneurship Center, and several social venture programs.
In April 2024, Vanderbilt University students joined other campuses in support of Palestine by setting up an encampment on campus. The protestors demanded that the university boycott companies that do business in Israel and demanded an end to what they call a Palestinian genocide. The protests escalated when the administration blocked a student vote on a BDS resolution. Students were forcibly removed by police from a building and three were arrested for misdemeanor assault, with those three students later expelled. More than 170 faculty members opposed the university's response to the protests. With the start of the 2024–25 academic year, Vanderbilt required all first-year undergraduate students to attend mandatory meetings about the university's approach to free speech.
Administration history
Since the opening of the university in 1875, only nine individuals have served as chancellor. Landon Garland was the university's first chancellor, serving from 1875 to 1893. Garland organized the university and hired its first faculty. Garland Hall, an academic building on campus, is named in his honor.
The next chancellor was James Kirkland—serving from 1893 to 1937, he had the longest tenure of any Vanderbilt chancellor. He was responsible for severing the university's ties with the Methodist Church and relocating the medical school to the main campus. Vanderbilt's Main Building was renamed Kirkland Hall after Kirkland left in 1937.
The longest-tenured chancellor was followed by one of the shortest-tenured. Oliver Carmichael served Vanderbilt for just nine years, 1937 to 1946. Carmichael developed the graduate school, and established the Joint University Libraries for Vanderbilt, Peabody, and Scarritt College. Carmichael Towers, a set of high-rise dormitories on the northern edge of campus, were named for Chancellor Carmichael.
Carmichael's successor was Harvie Branscomb. Branscomb presided over a period of major growth and improvement at the university that lasted from 1946 until 1963. He was responsible for opening the admissions policy to all races. Branscomb Quadrangle is a residence hall complex named for the chancellor.
Alexander Heard, for whom the campus's 10-library system (with 3.3 million total volumes) is named, served as chancellor from 1963 to 1982. During his 20-year tenure, the Owen Graduate School of Management was founded, and Vanderbilt's merger with Peabody College was negotiated. He also survived calls for his ouster because of his accommodating stance on desegregation.
Joe B. Wyatt was the chancellor who served immediately after Heard, from 1982 until 2000. Wyatt oversaw a great increase in the university's endowment, an increase in student diversity, and the renovation of many campus buildings. Wyatt placed great emphasis on improving the quality of faculty and instruction, and during his tenure Vanderbilt rose to the top 25 in the U.S. News & World Report's annual rankings for the first time. The Wyatt Center on Peabody's campus is named for Wyatt and his wife.
Gee was appointed chancellor by the Board of Trust in February 2000. After allegations of lavish spending in 2005, the Board of Trust established a committee to monitor his personal spending more closely.
After Gordon Gee's departure in 2007, Zeppos was named interim chancellor. He was named chancellor suo jure on March 1, 2008, by the university's Board of Trust. In April 2019, Zeppos announced his intention to resign from the chancellorship on August 1, 2019. On December 4, 2019, it was announced that Daniel Diermeier would be the next chancellor. Diermeier took office on July 1 of the next year.
From Wikipedia’s article on Vanderbilt University, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5