Lecture by William Robbins, Emeritus Distinguished Professor of History at OSU.
The antecedents to modern Oregon State University are rooted in slavery and the Civil War. As a land-grant institution, the university’s pedigree is embedded in the Morrill Act, signed into law in 1862 by President Abraham Lincoln in the midst of America’s bloody Civil War. The legislation required states to designate their land-grant colleges, and in Oregon’s case, lawmakers selected Corvallis College, a school affiliated with the Method-Episcopal Church, South as its land-grant institution. The fierce acrimony associated with church control of the agricultural college, which lasted into the mid-1880s, will be the focus of Professor Robbins’s first vignette. The second vignette will address the real civil war between Oregon State University and the University of Oregon—the lengthy and oftentimes vitriolic battle over curriculum. “One can argue—with lots of supporting documents—that the curricular jousting persisted to the end of the twentieth century.”