Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio, United States. Founded as the Oberlin Collegiate Institute in 1833, it is the oldest coeducational liberal arts college in the United States and the second-oldest continuously operating coeducational institute of higher learning in the world. The Oberlin Conservatory of Music is the oldest continuously operating conservatory in the United States.
In 1835, Oberlin became one of the first colleges in the United States to admit African Americans, and in 1837, the first to admit women (other than Franklin College's brief experiment of 1787–89). It has been known since its founding for progressive student activism.
The College of Arts & Sciences offers more than 60 majors, minors, and concentrations. Oberlin is a member of the Great Lakes Colleges Association and the Five Colleges of Ohio consortium.
History
The Oberlin Collegiate Institute (name changed later to Oberlin College in 1850) was founded in 1833. The college's founders wrote voluminously and were featured prominently in the press, especially the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, in which the name Oberlin occurred 352 times by 1865. Original documents and correspondence survive and are readily available. There is a "wealth of primary documents and scholarly works". Robert Samuel Fletcher (class of 1920) published an important history in 1943. His disciple Geoffrey Blodgett (1953) continued Fletcher's work.
Founding
"'Oberlin' was an idea before it was a place." It began in revelation and dreams: Yankees' motivation to emigrate west, attempting perfection in God's eyes, "educating a missionary army of Christian soldiers to save the world and inaugurate God's government on earth, and the radical notion that slavery was America's most horrendous sin that should be instantly repented of and immediately brought to an end." Its immediate background was the wave of Christian revivals in western New York State, in which Charles Finney was very much involved. "Oberlin was the offspring of the revivals of 1830, '31, and '32." Oberlin founder John Jay Shipherd was an admirer of Finney, and visited him in Rochester, New York, when en route to Ohio for the first time. Finney invited Shipherd to stay with him as an assistant, but Shipherd "felt that he had his own important part to play in bringing on the millennium, God's triumphant reign on Earth. Finney's desires were one thing, but Shipherd believed that the Lord's work for him lay farther west." Shipherd attempted to convince Finney to accompany him west, which he did in 1835.
Oberlin was to be a pious, simple-living community in a sparsely populated area, of which the school, training ministers and missionaries, would be the centerpiece. The Oberlin Collegiate Institute was founded in 1833 by Shipherd and another Presbyterian minister, Philo Stewart, "formerly a missionary among the Cherokees in Mississippi, and at that time residing in Mr. Shipherd's family," who was studying Divinity with Shipherd. The institute was built on 500 acres (2 km2) of land donated by Titus Street, founder of Streetsboro, Ohio, and Samuel Hughes, who lived in Connecticut.
Shipherd and Stewert named their project after Alsatian minister Jean-Frédéric Oberlin, about whom a book had just been published, which Stewart was reading to Shipherd. Oberlin had brought social Christianity to an isolated region of France, just as they hoped to bring to the remote Western Reserve region of northeastern Ohio.
Their vision was:
A community of Christian families with a Christian school which should be "a center of religious influence and power which should work mightily upon the surrounding country and the world—a sort of missionary institution for training laborers for the work abroad"—the school to be conducted on the manual labor system, and to be open to both young men and young women. It was not proposed to establish a college but simply an academy for instruction in English and useful languages; and, if providence should favor it, in "practical Theology". In accordance with this plan the corporate name, "Oberlin College Institute"[,] was chosen.
Oberlin was very much a part of the Utopian perfectionist enthusiasm that swept the country in the 1830s. "Shipherd came close to being a Christian communist, and as he traveled about the country signing up recruits for the Oberlin colony, he carried with him a copy of the Oberlin covenant, which each colonist was required to sign."
The Oberlin covenant is a fascinating document. It has strong communal overtones, though, in the end, private property is allowed. It is very keen on plain, straight living—no smoking, no chewing [tobacco], no coffee or tea; jewelry and tight dresses are explicitly renounced, as are fancy houses, furniture, and carriages. But the main thrust of the covenant is clearly toward missionary education to save a perishing world.
The terms of the Oberlin covenant, as summarized by Shipherd, were:
Each member of the colony shall consider himself a steward of the Lord, & hold only so much property as he can advantageously manage for the Lord. Everyone, regardless of worldly maxims, shall return to Gospel simplicity of dress, diet, houses, and furniture, all appertaining to him, & be industrious & economical with the view of earning & saving as much as possible, not to hoard up for old age, & for children, but to glorify God in the salvation of men: And that no one need to be tempted to hoard up, the colonists (as members of one body, of which Christ is the head), mutually pledge that they will provide in all respects for the widowed, orphan, & all the needy as well as for themselves & households.
Predecessor: The Oneida Institute
With the noble exception of the Oneida Institute in the state of New York, which, in the midst of persecution, has stood erect and preeminently true to the slave, mighty in its free testimony, and terrible to the oppressor, the Institution of Oberlin is the only one in the United States in which the black and colored student finds a home, where he is fully and joyously regarded as a man and a brother.
The Lane Rebels are commonly mentioned in the early history of Oberlin. These original Oberlin students, who had little to do with Lane other than walking out on it, were carrying on a tradition that began at the Oneida Institute of Science and Industry, in Oneida County, New York, near Utica. Oneida was "a hotbed of anti-slavery activity", "abolitionist to the core, more so than any other American college." A fundraising trip to England sought funds for both colleges. Oberlin's anti-slavery activities supplanted those of Oneida, which fell on hard times and closed in 1843. Funding previously provided by the philanthropist brothers Lewis and Arthur Tappan was transferred to Oberlin. Oberlin became the new "academic powder keg for abolitionism."
Oneida was founded by George Washington Gale, of whom Oberlin President Charles Grandison Finney was a disciple. The institute's second and final President, Beriah Green, moved to Oneida after he proved too abolitionist for Western Reserve College, Oberlin's early competitor in the Ohio Western Reserve.
The Lane Rebels enroll at Oberlin
The historian Roland Baumann described the early situation:
When the Oberlin Collegiate Institute was formed in 1833 the founders did not anticipate including black Americans in the student body. Additionally, the slavery question did not play any part in the college's or colony's establishment. Such matters arose only when Oberlin's trustees agreed to admit the Lane Seminary Rebels from Cincinnati to Oberlin. The Lane Rebels collectively demanded that students at the seminary have the right to freely debate antislavery issues, and that the seminary's faculty members manage the affairs of the institution.
The charismatic Theodore Dwight Weld, after three years (1827–1830) studying with Gale at Oneida, was hired by the new Society for Promoting Manual Labor in Literary Institutions, a project of the Tappans. (By "literary institutions" what is meant is non-religious schools, as in "In every literary institution there are a number of hours daily, in which nothing is required of the student.") He was charged with finding a site for "a great national manual labor institution where training for the Western ministry could be provided for poor but earnest young men who had dedicated their lives to the home missionary cause in the vast valley of the Mississippi." By coincidence, the administrators of new and barely-functioning Lane Seminary, a manual labor school located just outside Cincinnati, were looking for students. Weld visited Cincinnati in 1832, determined that the school would do, got the approval of the Tappans, and by providing recommendations to them took over as de facto head of the Seminary, to the point of choosing the president (Lyman Beecher, after Finney turned it down) and telling the trustees whom to hire. He organized and led a group exodus of Oneida students, and others from upstate New York, to come to Lane. "Lane was Oneida moved west."
This coincided with the emergence of "immediatism": the call for immediate and uncompensated freeing of all slaves, which at the time was a radical idea, and the rejection of "colonization", sending freed slaves to Africa by the American Colonization Society. "The anti-slavery and the colonization questions had become exciting ones throughout the whole country, and the students deemed it to be their duty thoroughly to examine them, in view of their bearing upon their future responsibilities as ministers of the gospel." Shortly after their arrival at Lane, the Oneida contingent held a lengthy, well-publicized series of debates, over 18 days during February 1834, on the topic of abolition versus colonization, concluding with the endorsement of the former and rejection of the latter. (Although announced as debate, no one spoke in favor of colonization on any of the evenings.) The trustees and administrators of Lane, fearful of violence like the Cincinnati riots of 1829, prohibited off-topic discussions, even at meals. The Lane Rebels, including almost all of Lane's theological students, among them the entire Oneida contingent, resigned en masse in December, and published a pamphlet explaining their decision. A trustee, Asa Mahan, resigned also, and the trustees fired John Morgan, a faculty member who supported the students.
A chance encounter with Shipherd, who was travelling around Ohio recruiting students for his new Collegiate Institute, led to the proposal that they come to Oberlin, along with Mahan and the fired Lane professor. They did so, but only after Oberlin agreed to their conditions:
Oberlin, like Oneida, would admit African Americans on an equal basis. At the time, this was a radical and unpopular measure, even dangerous. Previous attempts at "racially" integrated schools, the Noyes Academy and the Canterbury Female Boarding School, had been met with violence that destroyed both schools. Refugees from both had enrolled at Oneida. No one was calling for racially integrated schools, except at Oneida.
This measure caused the trustees "a great struggle to overcome their prejudices". Moving their meeting to Elyria on January 1, 1835, at the Temperance House instead of Oberlin, so as to avoid a hostile and possibly disruptive audience, the trustees agreed to hire Mahan and Morgan, but took no action on the black question. They tabled it, until it was made clear that if they did not agree, they would lose the Tappans' money, the cadre of students, Mahan, Finney, and Shipherd himself, who threatened to quit and set forth at length the reasons Oberlin should educate blacks. The Trustees, meeting on February 9 in Shipherd's house, reexamined the question, and it passed after Trustee Chairman John Keep broke a 3–3 tie vote.
There would be no restrictions on discussion of slavery or any other topic.
Asa Mahan, the Lane trustee who resigned with the students, would become president. This initiative came from the Oneida students, and Weld in particular.
Professor John Morgan, fired by Lane for supporting the students, would be hired also.
Under what Fletcher labeled the "Finney compact", in sharp contrast with and in reaction to recent events at Lane, the internal affairs of the college were to be under faculty control, "much to the irritation of our latter-day trustees, and occasionally our presidents and deans". This commitment to academic freedom was a key innovation in American higher education.
"In the summer of 1835, they all arrived in Oberlin—President Mahan, Father Finney, Professor Morgan, the Lane rebels, the first black students, and the Tappans' money." The Oberlin Anti-Slavery Society, calling for "immediate emancipation", was founded in June 1835. The names of Shipherd, Mahan, and Finney are first on its founding document, followed by names of the Oneida contingent.
Oberlin replaced Oneida as "the hot-bed of Abolitionism", "the most progressive college in the United States". Oberlin sent forth cadres of minister-abolitionists every year:
From this fountain streams of anti-slavery influence began at once to flow. Pamphlets, papers, letters, lecturers and preachers, and school teachers, some five hundred each winter, went forth everywhere preaching the anti-slavery word. It was the influence emanating from this school that saved our country in its great hour of peril. There were thousands of other co-operating influences, but had that which went out from Oberlin been subtracted, there can hardly remain a doubt that freedom would have foundered in the storm. Indeed it is doubtful whether there would have been any storm. The nation probably would have meekly yielded to the dominion of the slave power, and the Western Hemisphere would have become a den of tyrants and slaves. As it was, we were scarcely saved.
19th century – post founding
Asa Mahan (1799–1889) accepted the position of first president of the Oberlin Collegiate Institute in 1835, simultaneously serving as the chair of intellectual and moral philosophy and professor of theology. Mahan's strong advocacy of immediatism—the immediate and complete freeing of all slaves—greatly influenced the philosophy of the college. The same year, two years after its founding, the school began admitting African Americans. The college experienced financial distress, and Rev. John Keep and William Dawes were sent to England to raise funds in 1839–40. A nondenominational seminary, Oberlin's Graduate School of Theology (first called the undergraduate Theological Department), was established alongside the college in 1833. In 1965, the board of trustees voted to discontinue graduate instruction in theology at Oberlin, and in September 1966, six faculty members and 22 students merged with the Divinity School of Vanderbilt University. Oberlin's role as an educator of African-American students prior to the Civil War and thereafter was significant. In 1844, Oberlin Collegiate Institute graduated its first black student, George Boyer Vashon, who later became one of the founding professors of Howard University and the first black lawyer admitted to the Bar in New York State.
The college's treatment of African Americans was inconsistent. Although intensely anti-slavery, and admitting black students from 1835, the school began segregating its black students by the 1880s with the fading of evangelical idealism. Nonetheless, Oberlin graduates accounted for a significant percentage of African-American college graduates by the end of the 19th century. One such black alumnus was William Howard Day, who would go on to found Cleveland's first black newspaper, The Aliened American. The college was listed as a National Historic Landmark on December 21, 1965, for its significance in admitting African Americans and women.
Oberlin is the oldest coeducational college in the United States, having admitted four women in 1837 to its two-year "women's program". These four women, who were the first to enter as full students, were Mary Kellogg (Fairchild), Mary Caroline Rudd, Mary Hosford, and Elizabeth Prall. All but Kellogg graduated. Mary Jane Patterson graduated with honors in 1862, the first black woman to earn a B.A. degree. Soon, women were fully integrated into the college, and comprised from a third to half of the student body. The religious founders, especially evangelical theologian Charles Grandison Finney, saw women as morally superior to men. Oberlin ceased operating for seven months in 1839 and 1840 due to lack of funds, making it the second-oldest continuously operating coeducational liberal arts college in the United States.
Mahan, who was often in conflict with faculty, resigned his position as president in 1850. Replacing him was famed abolitionist and preacher Charles Grandison Finney, a professor at the college since its founding, who served until 1866. At the same time, the institute was renamed "Oberlin College", and in 1851 received a charter with that name. Under Finney's leadership, Oberlin's faculty and students increased their abolitionist activity. They participated with the townspeople in efforts to assist fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad, where Oberlin was a stop, as well as to resist the Fugitive Slave Act. One historian called Oberlin "the town that started the Civil War" due to its reputation as a hotbed of abolitionism. In 1858, both students and faculty were involved in the controversial Oberlin–Wellington Rescue of a fugitive slave, which received national press coverage. Two participants in this raid, Lewis Sheridan Leary and John Anthony Copeland, along with another Oberlin resident, Shields Green, also participated in John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry. This heritage was commemorated on campus by the 1977 installation of sculptor Cameron Armstrong's "Underground Railroad Monument", a railroad track rising from the ground toward the sky, and monuments to the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue and the Harper's Ferry Raid, which followed an 1841 incident in which a group of abolitionists from Oberlin, using saws and axes, freed two captured fugitive slaves from the Lorain County jail.
In 1866, James Fairchild became Oberlin's third president, and first alumnus to lead it. A committed abolitionist, Fairchild, at that point chair of theology and moral philosophy, had played a role in the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue, hiding fugitive slave John Price in his home. During Fairchild's tenure, the faculty and physical plant of the college expanded dramatically. In 1889, he resigned as president but remained as chair of systematic theology. In 1896, Fairchild returned as acting president until 1898.
Oberlin College was prominent in sending Christian missionaries abroad. In 1881, students at Oberlin formed the Oberlin Band to journey as a group to remote Shanxi province in China. A total of 30 members of the Oberlin Band worked in Shanxi as missionaries over the next two decades. Ten died of disease, and in 1900, fifteen of the Oberlin missionaries, including wives and children, were killed by Boxers or Chinese government soldiers during the Boxer Rebellion. The Oberlin Shansi Memorial Association, an independent foundation, was established in their memory. The Association, with offices on campus, sponsors Oberlin graduates to teach in China, India, and Japan. It also hosts scholars and artists from Asia to spend time on the Oberlin campus.
20th century
Henry Churchill King became Oberlin's sixth president in 1902. At Oberlin from 1884 onward, he taught in mathematics, philosophy, and theology. Robert K. Carr served as Oberlin College president from 1960 to 1970, during the tumultuous period of student activism. Under his presidency, the school's physical plant added 15 new buildings. Under his leadership, student involvement in college affairs increased, with students serving on nearly all college committees as voting members (including the board of trustees).
In 1970, Oberlin made the cover of Life as one of the first colleges in the country to have co-ed dormitories. Despite these accomplishments, Carr clashed repeatedly with the students over the Vietnam War, and he left office in 1969. History professor Ellsworth C. Carlson became acting president.
Robert W. Fuller had left Oberlin without graduating to pursue graduate work in physics, but had shown commitment to educational reform as a Trinity College dean. He was unanimous choice of the selection committee in November 1970. At 33 years old, Fuller became tenth president of the college, one of the youngest college presidents in U.S. history. His Oberlin presidency was a turbulent time at Oberlin and in higher education generally. Fuller called for reforming the curriculum, reducing the role of faculty, and addressed the status of women, expanded programs in the arts, and enlarged the role of students in governance. He tripled the enrollment of minorities. In what was called the Oberlin Experiment, he hired Jack Scott as Athletic Director, who recruited and hired the first four African-American athletic coaches at a predominantly white American college or university, including Tommie Smith, the gold medalist sprinter from the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City.
Fuller was succeeded by the longtime Dean of the Conservatory, Emil Danenberg, who served as president from 1975 to 1982, and died in office. In 1983, following a nationwide search, Oberlin hired S. Frederick Starr, an expert on Russian and Eurasian affairs and skilled musician, as its 12th president. Starr's academic and musical accomplishments boded well for his stewardship of both the college and the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music. Despite increasing minority hiring, Starr's tenure was marked by clashes with students over divestment from South Africa and the dismissal of a campus minister, as well as Starr's reframing Oberlin as the "Harvard of the Midwest". A particularly vitriolic clash with students on the front lawn of his home in April 1990 led Starr to take a leave of absence from July 1991 to February 1992. He resigned in March 1993, effective in June of that year.
21st century
Nancy Dye became the 13th president of Oberlin College in July 1994, succeeding the embattled Starr. Oberlin's first female president, she oversaw the construction of new buildings, increased admissions selectivity, and helped increase the endowment with the largest capital campaign to that point. Dye was known for her accessibility and inclusiveness. Especially in her early years, she was a regular attendee at football games, concerts, and dorm parties. Dye served as president for nearly 13 years, resigning on June 30, 2007. Marvin Krislov served as president of the college from 2007 to 2017, moving on to assume the presidency of Pace University. On May 30, 2017, Carmen Twillie Ambar was announced as the 15th president of Oberlin College, becoming the first African-American person and second woman to hold the position.
Oberlin's first and only hired trade union expert, Chris Howell, argued that the college engaged in "illegal" tactics to attempt to decertify its service workers' July 1999 vote to become members of United Automobile Workers union. Howell wrote that college workers sought the union's representation in response to the administration's effort to "speed up work" to meet a "mounting budget crisis".
In February 2013, the college received significant press concerning its so-called "No Trespass List", a secret list maintained by the college of individuals barred from campus without due process. Student activists and members of the surrounding town joined to form the One Town Campaign, which challenged this policy. On February 13, 2013, a forum at the Oberlin Public Library that attracted over 200 people, including members of the college administration, the Oberlin city council and national press, saw speakers compare the atmosphere of the college to "a gated community".
In September 2014, on Rosh Hashanah, Oberlin Students for Free Palestine placed 2,133 black flags in the main square of the campus as a "call to action" in honor of the 2,133 Palestinians who died in the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict. In January 2016, hundreds of Oberlin alumni signed a letter to the Oberlin administration stating that this protest was an example of antisemitism on the campus. Oberlin SFP responded with their own letter, detailing why protest of Israel does not constitute antisemitism. They wrote, "Feeling discomfort because one must confront the realities of Operation Protective Edge carried out in the name of the safety of the Jewish people does not amount to anti-Semitism."
In early 2016, an Oberlin professor, Joy Karega, suggested Israel was behind 9/11 and blamed it for the Charlie Hebdo attacks and for ISIS, prompting a rebuke from faculty and administration. After five-and-a-half months of discussion, the school suspended and then fired her. The following week, the home of a Jewish professor at Oberlin was vandalized and a note that read "Gas Jews Die" was left on his front door.
Oberlin came under federal investigation in late 2023 by the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights for alleged breach of Title VI, which protects students from discrimination because of their religion. The focus of the investigation was on past statements of Professor Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, which some viewed as antisemitic.
Gibson's Bakery v. Oberlin College
In 2016, a black Oberlin student was caught shoplifting two bottles of wine from Gibson's Bakery and Market, a downtown Oberlin business. A scuffle ensued between Oberlin students and Gibson's staff, and the students involved pled guilty to misdemeanor charges. Oberlin faculty and students subsequently staged large demonstrations urging a boycott of Gibson's on the grounds that the store was racist, and Gibson's sued alleging libel and other charges. In June 2019, the college was found liable for libel and tortious interference in a lawsuit initiated by the store; the bakery was awarded damages of $44 million by the jury, but a legal cap on damages reduced the award to $31.5 million. In October 2019, the college appealed the case to the Ohio District Courts of Appeals in Akron, Ohio. On March 31, 2022, the Court of Appeals unanimously dismissed both appeals, Oberlin and Gibson, upholding the jury verdict and Judge Miraldi's decisions. The Supreme Court of Ohio chose to not accept the appeal and cross-appeal on August 29, 2022. In December 2022, Oberlin College paid Gibson's Bakery $36.59 million, the entire amount due. "We hope that the end of the litigation will begin the healing of our entire community", said the college.
Academics
Oberlin was ranked tied for the 55th-best national liberal arts college in the 2025 edition of U.S. News & World Report's "Best Colleges" ranking.
Forbes ranked Oberlin 197th out of the top 500 rated private and public colleges and universities in America for the 2024-25 report. Oberlin was also ranked 46th among liberal arts universities and 29th in the Midwest.
Of Oberlin's nearly 3,000 students, nearly 2,400 are enrolled in the College of Arts & Sciences, a little over 400 in the Conservatory of Music, and the remaining 180 or so in both College and Conservatory under the five-year Double-Degree program.
The College of Arts & Sciences offers over 50 majors, minors, and concentrations. Its most popular undergraduate majors, based on 2023 graduates, were: