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have suffered over the centuries.

      —Association of Black Faculty Members, Fellows, and Administrators, 1969

      To many, Ivy League institutions, sometimes known as the Ancient Eight, represent the best and highest ideals of American education.1 They have provided and continue to provide the nation’s and world’s leaders. In 2008 and 2012, the United States celebrated the election and reelection of its first black president, Barack Hussein Obama. It was not surprising that he had graduated from both Columbia University and Harvard University; nor was it shocking that he had married Michelle Robinson who (along with her brother) graduated from Princeton University; she is also an alumna of Harvard Law. The Obamas’ eldest daughter, Malia, joined the Harvard class of 2021. Of President Obama’s cabinet in the first and second term, more than 50 percent had received degrees from Ivy institutions. Of the cabinet members of color, more than 50 percent received an Ivy education, and of the black members, more than 70 percent held degrees from the Ancient Eight. The percentage of Ivy degree holders on the U.S. Supreme Court is not much different. All but one attended an Ivy institution.2 In total, fifteen U.S. presidents have attained degrees from Ivy schools. Of the presidents to hold office since 1944, nine have received a degree from or presided over an Ivy League school. Undoubtedly, America and the world places value on Ivy League education. In terms of achieving the highest levels of access regarding American decision making, policy, and industry, an Ivy League education has proven to be invaluable.

      During President Obama’s elections in 2008 and 2012, two controversies arose surrounding the experience of the black students attending Ivy League universities. The first concerned the thesis that then Michelle Robinson wrote at Princeton in 1985; the other involved President Obama hugging and praising the so-called radical Derrick Bell. In 1985, Michelle Robinson’s thesis “Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community,” attempted to study attitudes of black alumni in their interaction with black and white people after graduating. Additionally, the sociology major investigated whether the alumni wanted to “benefit the Black community in comparison to other entities” and if they had feelings of “obligation” to improve the lives of the “Black poor.”3

      The future attorney and first lady’s study shed light on several important themes regarding the black experience with the Ivy League. Her choice of topics displayed an affinity that so many black students had with topics that related to black life. She showed a clear awareness of the fact that black students who attended and graduated from Princeton were unique and that they would be interacting with white people of similar educational pedigree. Also, Robinson and her topic illustrated a deep concern with the formula of the Ivy alumni that maintained their black identity while continuing to help the community even as they entered the professional world. For black alumni of the Ivy League there was the additional burden of race representation as they sought success in their educations and careers. In the run-up to the 2008 election, critics of candidate Obama claimed that Michelle Obama was a militant racist.4

      The second incident that drew controversy in the 2012 election involved a video clip of President Obama and Derrick Bell, the “father” of Critical Race Theory, which argues that racism has been integral to the fabric of American institutions and society in general. Alongside Critical Race Theory, Bell advanced his interest-convergence theory, which cogently contended that white gatekeeper institutions offer concessions in the way of black freedom and access when those concessions benefit white institutions. Bell’s appointment at Harvard was a result of student protest that demanded black professors in the law school. Upon agreeing to join the faculty, Bell stipulated that he would only stay if the law school committed to hiring more professors of color. By 1991, Bell, dissatisfied and disillusioned with the law school’s effort, walked away from his tenured position, vowing not to return until the law school kept its promise to diversify the faculty. In 1991, Barack Obama, then a student of Bell’s at Harvard Law and editor of the law review, complimented his mentor at a rally for Bell’s personal stands against racial discrimination and for his penetrating scholarship. Once the video surfaced in 2012, the conservative right media exploded with charges that Obama was a radical who had been trained by reverse racists.5

      In the cases of President and First Lady Obama, the access of black people to the Ivy League and the ability of black Ivy Leaguers to positively affect life chances in their communities on and off campus were central. The Obamas benefited from the resilience and activist work of earlier generations of black students who grappled with the challenges of race and rigor while searching for their rightful place in a nation that supposedly valued education, intelligence, and conviction. The black students who preceded the Obamas had to prove that they were worthy of access to the real and implied benefits of the Ivy League while also not abandoning their blackness as students and alumni. Many of those students, like the white graduates of Ivy institutions, navigated their way into the leadership class of America.

      In terms of American nationalism, these institutions were in the vanguard. They upheld high academic standards, attracted the most talented faculty members, and sought to mold the noble character of the students. The Ivy League also projected neglect and outright discrimination regarding black people. The white students who graduated from those schools propagated the views of their alma maters when they took leadership of the country. As seven of the eight Ivy schools in this country existed before the founding fathers drafted the U.S. Constitution, these schools may be more American than the nation itself with respect to culture and history. Ivy alumni and officials helped draft the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. In the twentieth century, they advanced American ideals in the world. A good example is Woodrow Wilson. Before orchestrating the League of Nations, Woodrow Wilson was in the “nation’s service and in the service of all nations” at Princeton first as a student, then as a faculty member, and then as president of the institution. As was the case with the ideal of democracy that he and others propagated in the United States and abroad, the fairness and democracy that he espoused as Princeton’s president extended to white people only. The white leaders of Ivy institutions later won American wars and helped to create the United Nations Charter, all while racism raged in the United States and at their alma maters.

      Like the nation in the twentieth century, these elite colleges and universities boasted an egalitarian spirit in their missions but struggled with the manifestation of the freedom to which both the nation and the schools aspired. Indeed, the Ivy League reflected the conflicted relationship of traditionally white America with black progress.6 They attempted to instill a sense of integrity in students while excluding some students entirely and admitting others only by way of quotas. The Ivy students, administrators, and alumni could, with no sense of irony, work to bring freedom and democracy to some while shutting out others. For them, America typically referred to white people, and it was with that in mind they proceeded to direct the institutions and the nation.

      Institutions do not exist in vacuums; instead, they operate in a historical context. The Ivy League, in the decades after World War II, confronted the Cold War, Vietnam War protests, the Civil Right Movement and Black Power Movement, the women’s movement, student demands for power, and poverty’s encroachment. Before World War II, Ivy officials made it clear that they believed their institutions could and should shut out troubles and undesirables with the Ivy-covered walls. As one Princeton alumnus from the class of 1920 remembered of his time at the university, “While at Princeton one is somewhat insulated from outside irrelevant forces.”7 For the alumnus, some of those outside forces included the push for racial equality and access to education.

      After World War II, these institutions’ officials, in observing the impediments to freedom that black people navigated, realized that they could not close the iron gates to the desires of young people to change their educational experiences and spaces.8 Along with the legislative and judicial gains that black people made in interstate travel, housing, and education, the postwar years helped some white people to more clearly see the value of black citizens. James A. Perkins, the president of Cornell, suggested that the Ivy League was moving slowly with regard to racial progress. He noted that during much of the postwar era “universities like the Ivy League and like Cornell really lived in a world that did not see the inevitable implication of this basic drift towards concerns for the equality of opportunity.”9 The Ivy League was living in a “dream world,” he said. Black students, faculty, and administrators unquestionably

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