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admissions offices to recruit black students later in the 1960s, administrators at elite preparatory academies, ironically, suggested that the universities were discriminating against them. In consequence, the move to recruit more racially diverse students at the university/college level indirectly influenced elite secondary academies to review their admissions practices. Still, the Ivies, in spite of some alterations, were exclusive. As one Ivy admissions official indicated in a 1968 report, the son (seven of the Ancient Eight were still male-only then) of an alumnus stood between a 40 and 50 percent chance of admissions; whereas all other applying students had less than a 20 percent chance of admission.36 That meant that for centuries, the culture of these institutions maintained itself by way of strict homogeneity. Black students, staff, and faculty disrupted that culture.

      Some observers recognized that the changes in demographics and culture on college campuses were long in coming. A New York Times editorial suggested that the institutions themselves were, in part, to blame for the uprisings on campuses that occurred in the 1960s. The unwillingness to accommodate the more progressive social climate off campus and to lessen the hold on power that administrations maintained on campus left some students little choice but to press their issues. The editorial opined: “Too many university administrators have waited until students—some genuinely idealistic … press their demands.” The “lack of initiative of school officials” led to “unsatisfactory ‘settlements’ under pressure,” stated the editorial.37

      The black freedom movement and activism of black youth had immense effects on the Ancient Eight. The stakes, with respect to their traditional existence, were high. Agents of change off campus and from within were able to pop the bubble of whiteness, security, and exclusivity that the Ivy institutions had created. No matter the school’s geographical setting, history, or leadership, the social movements of the postwar era dictated that change was coming. In lashing out at the war, young people pushed ROTC programs and defense recruiters off campus. In the same way, by 1975, each of the Ivies had revised its admissions policies to better accommodate black candidates. All but one of the eight Ivies had Black Studies programs, departments, or centers by then as well.

      By the end of the period that Upending the Ivory Tower covers (1975), women enrolled in and graduated from some of the Ivies for the first time in their histories; black women were among those pioneers. Because most of the eight Ivies did not admit a substantial number of women until the 1970s, the bulk of this narrative will focus on male students, staff, and administrators, while engaging in some discussion of how gender affected the approaches taken to campus life and decision making. Historians Stephanie Evans and Linda Perkins have done fascinating work on black women in higher education institutions. Both covered female collegians before Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Perkins focused specifically on those who attended what are called the Seven Sister colleges (Barnard, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Vassar, Bryn Mawr, Wellesley, and Radcliffe). Upending the Ivory Tower, therefore, explores in a somewhat limited way the participation of black students from Barnard (then associated with Columbia), Radcliffe (then associated with Harvard), and Pembroke College (formerly Women’s College of Brown University) in the 1960s.

      Given the historical context of the institutions themselves, particularly their exclusively male student bodies and staffs, the discussion of black presence in the Ivy League is necessarily male-centric. Recent scholarship has effectively demonstrated that there was no area of social advancement with regard to black life that black women did not influence during the period, and that was true of life in elite colleges.38 The scholarship regarding the presence and activism of black women at the Seven Sisters during the postwar era and at the eight Ivies in the subsequent period will be useful in filling the scholastic gaps.

      The arrival of women was a change for the Ivy League, and so too was the challenge to leaders. By 1975, six of the eight Ivy presidents who served in the 1960s had resigned. The presidents of Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth, and Penn all stepped down during the period of protest. The nation’s most exclusive educational centers could not escape change. From the most conservative to the most liberal, the presidents could not satisfy protesting students. The unity that characterized the nation during World War II had unraveled to the point of disjunction.

      The presidents of the elite universities were aware of the moment as they struggled to keep their institutions together. In 1969, at a conference hosted by Cornell University, three Ivy presidents discussed the implications of uprisings on their campuses. They spoke of the “crisis” that was occurring. The president of Harvard, Nathan M. Pusey, suggested that the sentiment of the nation was turning against universities because of the student “militants.”39 Cities and state officials were attempting to take legislative action against campus demonstrators if university administrators could not control the problem. Cornell’s leader, James A. Perkins, asserted that if the nonmilitants (whom he claimed formed the majority on campus) maintained their “deafening silence,” the university faced grave danger. Only if students operated within the “bounds of checks and balances” could the university function effectively.40 The Cornell president did concede, however, that the educations that the students were receiving needed to be “relevant” to life after school. That was the language that militants inserted into the lexicon of the period. Harvard’s leader warned against altering the well-established curricula and policies of the staid universities because young adults were not wholly satisfied. No need to sacrifice all that “precious and good” for the minority of dissidents, said the head of the nation’s oldest university; doing so might threaten academic freedom and lead top scholars to search for work elsewhere. Perhaps, as scholar Ula Taylor indicated in an article about a black Ivy League student-activist, the presidents “longed for the good old days of political conservatism and elitist privilege.”41

      When asked how to keep the militants away from the cherished institutions, Brown University’s president remarked that it would require rejecting the most academically talented and reflective students. Scholars Milton Mankoff and Richard Flacks, in their study on the social base of the American student movement, found the Brown leader to be correct.42 Many of the white campus radicals did well academically, usually majoring in the liberal arts or social sciences. They typically came from politically liberal homes and were financially comfortable. Black students in the late 1960s largely came from working-class homes and public schools and performed well academically. At Ivy institutions, however, there was a sizeable minority of black students who were the second or third in their families to attend a university, but many by the late 1960s and early 1970s were first generation students. The methods of change depended somewhat on each president’s style of leadership. Some were more liberal and outgoing, such as Perkins and Yale’s Kingman Brewster; while others were more reserved and conservative like Pusey and Columbia’s Grayson Kirk.43 Students and community activists used whatever tactics best suited their situations to achieve their goals.

      Upending the Ivory Tower is organized along four major themes, although every effort was made to maintain chronological context. The first is the admission of black students and the various steps the Ivies took to circumvent traditional methods of relying upon prep schools and alumni in an effort attract and keep matriculants from different backgrounds. A second theme concerns students who arrived during the mid-1960s and sought not to assimilate. As urban uprisings stunned white America, black students took inspiration from the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement and applied the rhetoric and methods of outside activism on campus. Seeking to avoid the destruction they observed off campus, administrators of Ivy schools relented to changes. The power to control space and place is the basis of the third theme. The Ivies were at the forefront of the corporatization of the “university” after World War II, and their stance on progress stirred great controversy among black residents and student activists. The final theme delves into the birth of Black Studies in the Ivy League. The struggle for the curricular inclusion of people from African descent was remarkably tense, but Black Studies is one of the most enduring legacies of not just campus activism but the black freedom movement in general. These four themes help provide context for the wave of black youth activism that has arisen since the 2013 death of Trayvon Martin.

      Chapter 1 explores the lives of black desegregators in the Ivy League from the early twentieth century through WWII. Rather than analyze the number of black students present

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