Williams College

Ephraim Williams Jr., the college’s founder, was born in Newton, Massachusetts, on March 7, 1715. A will he drafted on May 5, 1748, would have funded Christian instruction for Indians at Stockbridge; he later revised it, removed the reference to Stockbridge’s Native inhabitants and moved the planned school to an emerging settlement in northern Berkshire County that was later named Williamstown.⁠[1]

On December 5, 1753, Williamstown’s first proprietors’ meeting was held at Seth Hudson’s house near Hemlock Brook.⁠[1]

On July 22, 1755, while in Albany on his way to Lake George with his Massachusetts militia, Ephraim Williams wrote a will leaving his residual estate to fund a free school in West Township, where he had commanded militia at Fort Massachusetts. The bequest required that the disputed township fall under Massachusetts and be renamed Williamstown.⁠[2]

The timeline of the college’s Archives and Special Collections states that the same will conveyed enslaved people, tying the college’s founding to wealth derived from enslavement.⁠[1]

Ephraim Williams was killed at Lake George on September 8, 1755. The college timeline names the engagement the Battle of the Bloody Morning Scout; the history in the college’s staff handbook calls it the Battle of Lake George.⁠[1][2]

On March 8, 1785, the Massachusetts General Court granted a charter to the “Trustees of the Donation of Ephraim Williams, Esq., for Maintaining a Free-School in Williamstown,” directing the trustees to run a school for youth in keeping with the testator’s charitable intent.⁠[1]

The estate’s $11,277 was not enough to build a schoolhouse. The General Court granted a petition for a lottery in 1789; tickets were advertised on April 28, 1790, in newspapers such as the Massachusetts Centinel, and the lottery raised more than $3,449 for the schoolhouse that later became West College. The staff-handbook history adds that a lottery had funded the free school and that Berkshire County residents raised money for the college in 1819.⁠[1][2]

On October 26, 1791, the Williamstown Free School admitted its first students; the staff-handbook history states that after many delays fifteen scholars were admitted.⁠[1][2]

On May 22, 1792, the trustees petitioned the General Court to convert the school into a college, proposed as “Williams Hall.” They argued that keeping college-bound students in Massachusetts mattered, that the rural setting lacked urban “allurements,” and that low costs would put education within reach of the middling and lower classes.⁠[1]

On June 22, 1793, the General Court granted the charter converting the free school into Williams College, which first opened on October 9, 1793. The staff-handbook history describes Williams as the twenty-first institution of higher learning in the former British colonies, the second in Massachusetts and the sixth in New England; the college’s 2018 news release calls it the second-oldest institution of higher learning in Massachusetts.⁠[1][2][3]

Encyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopædia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopedia first published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768; the name also refers to its publisher, Chicago-based Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (which presents itself as The Britannica Group). The print edition ended in 2012, and the company’s main businesses since then have been the online encyclopedia Britannica.com, digital education products for schools and libraries, and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.Open the full entry states that the institution opened in 1791 and was founded as a college in 1793, that like many New England colleges it was established by the Congregational church, and that it is now nondenominational.⁠[4]

On September 2, 1795, the first Commencement was held in the old town meeting house. Students delivered orations and disputations in Latin, English and French on subjects including the slave trade, American government, the French Revolution and women’s education; in 1795 each senior appeared on the program four times, and as classes grew fewer students spoke.⁠[1]

On November 5, 1795, the Adelphic Union, the college’s first extracurricular society, was officially established; at first all students were members.⁠[1]

On September 3, 1799, the trustees abolished the professorship of French. Quoting Williams 1793-1993, A Pictorial History, the timeline states that the first professor, Samuel Mackay, came from Canada, earned $400 a year and sold books on the side; some historians have said that French was stressed to attract Canadian students; anti-French feeling grew in New England, and in 1798 students petitioned the U.S. President in favor of war against France, to which President John AdamsJohn AdamsJohn Adams (1735–1826) was the first vice president (1789–1797) and the second president (1797–1801) of the United States. Earlier he served in the Continental Congress, was a signer of the Treaty of Paris and became the first American minister to Great Britain.Open the full entry responded politely. Fifty-four years passed before a French professorship reappeared.⁠[1]

On September 1, 1802, the trustees voted to procure a new college seal and a screw for it.⁠[1]

In the summer of 1806, five undergraduates met at what became known as the “haystack meeting,” an event that inspired American foreign missions.⁠[2]

On February 8, 1812, alumni Gordon Hall (Class of 1808) and Luther Rice (Class of 1810) were ordained; they were two of the first five missionaries sponsored by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.⁠[1]

On November 2, 1819, Zephaniah Swift Moore, the second president, and the trustees petitioned the General Court to move the college to Northampton. On February 1, 1820, the legislature rejected the petition, its committee finding relocation “neither lawful nor expedient” while respecting the petitioners’ motives.⁠[1]

On July 17, 1821, Moore resigned, effective after the fall Commencement. The timeline notes that several trustees had lured him to Williamstown with the promise of a move south; after the petition failed, about half the students planned to withdraw, many to follow Moore to Amherst, threatening enrollment. The staff-handbook history states that Moore led students to what became Amherst College, and that a senior wrote at the time that the college would either die suddenly or linger for two or three years.⁠[1][2]

Reverend Edward Dorr Griffin became president in 1821. The staff-handbook history credits him with saving the college by using its reputation for religious conservatism to raise funds; by 1828 he was overseeing construction on Main Street of a building with a chapel, library and classrooms, now called Griffin Hall.⁠[2]

On September 5, 1821, alumni approved the preamble and bylaws of the Society of Alumni, which the college describes as the first alumni society anywhere. Alumni Emory Washburn (Class of 1817) and Daniel Noble (Class of 1796) were moved to act, and Washburn published notices in regional newspapers calling graduates to a meeting; two weeks later about 23 percent of living alumni attended. The college’s “About” page states that graduates join the oldest alumni society in the country.⁠[1][2][5]

Faculty records in the college archives show the early rules: on April 17, 1822, the Faculty banned instrumental music at Commencement and at exhibitions outside the house, allowing up to four musicians at Commencement and two at exhibitions; on December 22, 1824, four members of the Class of 1827 were fined $5 for playing cards; on May 7, 1828, Edward Clark (Class of 1831) was fined $5 and suspended for a term for setting off firecrackers; and on May 25, 1829, John R. Hickok, a non-graduate of the Class of 1831, was fined 50 cents for attending a dancing school.⁠[1]

On December 10, 1829, Erasmus D. Towner (Class of 1833, non-graduate) was expelled for repeatedly setting fire to a college outbuilding; a year later another student confessed to starting the fire, and the college voted to readmit Towner. Riots on July 4, 1832, led to the expulsion of several students; Faculty records show that Alexander H. Strong was “cut off from college” for disorderly conduct at Adams the previous Saturday and for being found disguised on July 4 for the purpose, as he confessed, of throwing fireballs around the college.⁠[1]

On October 29, 1833, Kappa Alpha became the first fraternity at Williams. Legend has it that fourteen students went to Union College to obtain a Phi Beta Kappa charter and returned instead with a charter for the social fraternity.⁠[1]

On August 25, 1835, the first expedition of the Lyceum of Natural History sailed from Boston for the Bay of Fundy and Nova Scotia; it was the first student expedition, led by Professors Albert Hopkins and Ebenezer Emmons. On August 14, 1855, members of the Lyceum dedicated Jackson Hall, their new headquarters in the Berkshire Quad.⁠[1]

Mark Hopkins, the fourth president, was born in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, on February 4, 1802. He was a professor from 1830 to 1887 and president from 1836 to 1872, and he is known for making students central to education. In his 1836 inaugural address he said the mind should be regarded “as a flame that is to be fed,” rejecting images of it as iron, marble or a receptacle for knowledge.⁠[1][2]

At the Williams Alumni Association dinner on December 28, 1871, James A. GarfieldJames A. GarfieldJames A. Garfield (1831–1881) was an American educator, soldier and politician who rose to major general in the Civil War, served for many years in the U.S. House of Representatives and was the 20th president of the United States in 1881, dying in office after being shot.Open the full entry praised Mark Hopkins’s influence; his exact words went unrecorded, but the saying “The ideal college is Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the other” soon followed. Hopkins Hall on the campus is named for him.⁠[1][4]

Hopkins Observatory was dedicated on June 12, 1838.⁠[1]

On August 15, 1838, Nathaniel Hawthorne attended Commencement after spending several weeks in the area. The staff-handbook history quotes his notebook describing the graduates as “rough, brown-featured, schoolmaster-looking”; the timeline quotes him as writing that the students “ought to be day-dreamers, all of them.” The timeline adds that his American Note-Books reportedly contain the first printed use of the mountain name “Graylock,” which some credit to Albert Hopkins.⁠[1][2]

Henry David Thoreau visited in 1844 and praised the mountain setting; the college’s “About” page quotes him: “It would be no small advantage if every college were thus located at the base of a mountain.”⁠[2][5]

On October 17, 1841, the four-story original East College burned to the ground. On July 18, 1845, Professor Ebenezer Kellogg sold the West College garden plot to the college, which built Kellogg Hall there, on land now part of the Science Quad.⁠[1]

On August 5, 1850, alumnus David Dudley Field Jr. (Class of 1825) hosted a “literary picnic” for Hawthorne and Herman Melville on Monument Mountain in Great Barrington. On August 11, 1851, Melville and friends and relatives, eleven climbers in all, spent the night in the observatory on Mount Greylock; Evert Duyckinck wrote to his wife about the bonfire and the clouds and noted that the sunrise was a failure.⁠[1]

James A. Garfield, later the 20th president of the United States, entered Williams College as a junior in 1854 and graduated in 1856 as a member of the Class of 1856. On August 15, 1854, Ralph Waldo Emerson spoke to the Adelphic Union; the timeline states that Garfield was reportedly so moved that he could not sleep that night.⁠[1][6]

On July 1, 1859, Williams and Amherst played the first intercollegiate baseball game; Amherst won 66–32.⁠[1]

When the third term began on May 7, 1861, after the fall of Fort Sumter, undergraduates formed a battalion that drilled an hour a day; the excitement caused many to enlist, and incoming classes in the following years were smaller. Drawing on George L. Raymond’s 1862 journal, the timeline states that 317 Williams men from 38 classes (1825 to 1870) answered Abraham LincolnAbraham LincolnAbraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States (1861–1865). Born to a frontier farming family in Kentucky, he had less than a year of formal schooling, taught himself law, and served in the Illinois legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives before winning the presidency as the Republican candidate in 1860. During the Civil War he preserved the Union, issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and pushed the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery through Congress. He was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in Washington on April 14, 1865, and died the next day.Open the full entry’s call and that eight non-graduates joined the Confederate army.⁠[1]

On October 9, 1861, the Faculty allowed students to leave town without excuse on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons provided they missed no college exercises. On September 23, 1863, the Faculty required attendance at military drill on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays, 40 minutes each; on September 30 it voted that students who had been “in actual service in the defense of the Country” could be excused from drill on application.⁠[1]

On May 2, 1863, the Alpine Club, the oldest mountain-climbing organization in the country, took its first walk, to Birch and Prospect Glens; its founding members were nine Williamstown women, and Albert Hopkins was elected its Chronicler. On July 15, 1864, seniors and juniors met to establish a provisional Phi Beta Kappa chapter at Williams.⁠[1]

On July 28, 1867, President Mark Hopkins dedicated the Mission Park Haystack Monument, inscribed “The Field is the World” and funded by Harvey Rice (Class of 1824). On Alumni Day, July 28, 1868, the Soldier’s Monument was dedicated, making Williams the first college to commemorate its Civil War dead in this way.⁠[1]

On November 10, 1868, students protested a Faculty rule giving a zero for any recitation absence, excused or not. All but three of the 170 or more students signed a resolution to withdraw until the rule was taken back; Marshall Hapgood, a non-graduate of the Class of 1872, described it in the Vidette. Over the following weeks Hopkins and the Faculty softened the rule and the students returned.⁠[1]

On June 29, 1871, the Society of Alumni appointed a committee of John Bascom, David Dudley Field, Francis H. Dewey, Clement Hugh Hill and Rev. Henry Hopkins to study admitting women. The majority advised postponing the question to another generation; a minority report written by Bascom and co-signed by Field supported admitting women. On October 28 of that year the Vidette noted that East College had been wired for telegraphic communication.⁠[1]

On July 2, 1881, President Garfield was shot by a disgruntled office seeker in a Washington, D.C., railroad station.⁠[1]

On July 3, 1883, a violent storm destroyed Chadbourne Gymnasium, where the annual alumni dinner was held, smashing dishes, tables and the building.⁠[1]

The staff-handbook history states that until the late nineteenth century the college lacked financial security, and that enrollment and prosperity grew in the late nineteenth century as businessmen recognized the value of a liberal education. From 1793 to 1870 Massachusetts gave the college more than $150,000; in 1888 a Massachusetts court ruled that college-owned cows were tax exempt; and in the 1890s Frederick Ferris Thompson, Class of 1856, became the college’s largest benefactor. By 1906 Williams drew the largest share of students from outside New England among the region’s colleges.⁠[2]

On March 17, 1896, students voted 247 to 42 for a campus-wide honor code. On March 20, rain loosened part of the east side of old Clark Hall, which fell to the ground. On May 28, 1898, Cap and Bells staged its first production, a comedy titled For One Night Only.⁠[1]

On November 24, 1904, Morgan Hall caught fire while President Harry Hopkins called the North Adams fire department; four men and two hose carts responded, and the fire was out by 9 p.m. Damage was estimated at $30,000–35,000, and two-thirds of the residents were away for Thanksgiving recess. The dormitory, built in 1882, was to receive electric lights throughout after repairs.⁠[1]

On June 21, 1905, during Commencement weekend, President Theodore RooseveltTheodore RooseveltTheodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) was an American Republican politician, writer, naturalist, and soldier who served as the 26th President of the United States from 1901 to 1909 and received the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize for mediating an end to the Russo-Japanese War.Open the full entry attended the dedication of Thompson Memorial Chapel.⁠[1]

On November 3, 1908, the Williams Record posted presidential election returns at its office in Jesup Hall as William Howard TaftWilliam Howard TaftWilliam Howard Taft (1857–1930) was an American lawyer, judge and politician who served as the 27th president of the United States from 1909 to 1913 and as the 10th chief justice of the United States from 1921 to 1930, the only person to have held both offices.Open the full entry won; the previous Thursday a torchlight parade led by the North Adams band had marched Republicans to a rally at the Opera House. On October 12, 1912, the Record carried news that the trustees had voted to demolish College Hall, best known for the worst food on campus. On November 7, 1912, the Good Government Club’s Apple Growing Committee set the date for Orchard Day, with State Pomologist F. C. Sears and Professor R. Reese of Massachusetts Agricultural College to speak on November 19 on apple raising and marketing. On March 17, 1914, the President and Dean abolished the freshman–sophomore cane contest, deemed too disorderly and raucous.⁠[1]

James S. Alexander Jr. (Class of 1917) was among the first Americans to learn of the Armistice: working at Marshal Ferdinand Foch’s headquarters and with the American Mission, he was woken at 5:45 a.m. on November 11, 1918, and spent the day translating armistice annexes for General John J. Pershing. He had first gone to France with 13 other Williams men and other volunteers for ambulance service, later joining the American Expeditionary Forces as a headquarters secretary and liaison officer; his drawings, maps and accounts are in the College Archives.⁠[1]

On December 6, 1918, Charles W. Whittlesey (Class of 1905) received the Congressional Medal of Honor; his papers are in the College Archives. The college held its World War I Victory Celebration on October 1, 1919. On January 6, 1920, Dean Howes asked the U.S. Internal Revenue Collector for details of an illicit distillery found in a college building, including its location.⁠[1]

During Commencement on June 20, 1920, the remains of Ephraim Williams Jr., moved from Lake George, were reinterred in a new crypt in the basement of Thompson Chapel. Governor Calvin CoolidgeCalvin CoolidgeCalvin Coolidge (1872–1933) was an American lawyer and politician who served as governor of Massachusetts and, from 1921, as vice president of the United States; he succeeded Warren G. Harding as the 30th president in August 1923, was elected to a full term in 1924 and served until 1929.Open the full entry, who had received an honorary degree from Williams the previous fall, spoke and, gesturing toward the flag-draped urn, reportedly said that Williams lay “underneath the flag for which he fought and died”; audience members later noted that Williams had died fighting for King George II. The cornerstone of Stetson Library was laid on October 20, 1920.⁠[1]

The staff-handbook history states that while other colleges pursued university status, Williams remained an undergraduate college and allowed electives with controls; a 1925 survey found it was the only major American college with neither absolutely required courses nor uncontrolled wide-option electives.⁠[2]

On March 11, 1927, Carl Sandburg gave a speech titled “An American Miscellany” to the Williams Forum in Jesup Hall. On April 19, 1927, the Lawrence Hall Art Museum opened with an exhibition of paintings and drawings by the late Mrs. Asa Morton, daughter of the 19th-century portrait painter Joseph Ames and wife of Romance Languages professor Asa Henry Morton, who had studied at the Julian Studio in France. On May 7, the Record described a new road over the Petersburgh Mountain pass that cut some 13 miles off the trip to Troy, New York; New York and Massachusetts bought 100 feet on each side to eliminate hot dog shanties, filling stations and other eyesores.⁠[1]

On January 24, 1935, the sinking of the Mohawk off the New JerseyNew JerseyNew Jersey is a state in the eastern United States on the Atlantic Ocean, bordered by New York State, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, with the Hudson River forming its northeastern boundary and the Delaware River its western boundary; its capital is Trenton and its largest city is Newark. One of the original 13 colonies, it became the third state to ratify the U.S. Constitution on December 18, 1787, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 9,288,994.Open the full entry coast killed Professor Herdman Cleland and seniors William Dwight Symmes, Lloyd Houghton Crowfoot and Julius Palmer, who were bound for Yucatán on a geological expedition; three Williams students survived. One year and one day later, Symmes’s parents presented the Symmes Gate to the college in honor of their son and the others lost.⁠[1]

On March 2, 1935, the Record announced that Latin would no longer be required for admission, and on September 21, 1935, that compulsory daily chapel had been abolished, though Sunday services remained required.⁠[1]

On March 13, 1937, the Williams Forum announced that André Malraux had cancelled his speaking engagement to interview President Franklin D. RooseveltFranklin D. RooseveltFranklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) was an American politician who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 to 1945, the only president elected four times; he led the country through the Great Depression and World War II and greatly expanded the federal government’s role through the New Deal.Open the full entry in Warm Springs, Georgia. On February 21, 1938, the college seismograph recorded a 14-second “earthquake” when the 75-foot brick chimney of the Greylock Hotel was brought down; Professor Freeman Foote timed the demolition with a stopwatch and Professor E. Perry logged when the first waves reached the seismograph.⁠[1]

On February 4, 1940, a man posing as an English professor with a forged letter of introduction stole the Shakespeare First Folio from the Chapin Library; the Federal Bureau of InvestigationFederal Bureau of InvestigationThe Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the federal investigative agency of the U.S. Department of Justice. It grew out of a force of special agents organized by Attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte in 1908, has used its present name since 1935 and is headquartered in Washington, D.C.Open the full entry recovered it later that year.⁠[1]

On April 15, 1941, Williams donated an ambulance for British forces on the North African front, following three earlier vehicles; it cost $1,350, of which $450 came from students, $650 from a sinking fund and $250 from faculty. When the term ended on October 25, 1945, three seniors graduated without Commencement exercises, and on October 31 the V-12 program ended after training 1,076 men at Williams.⁠[1]

From 5:00 to 5:30 p.m. Eastern on March 27, 1949, the Williams Glee Club broadcast from Adams Memorial Theatre on NBCNBCNBC (National Broadcasting Company) is an American national commercial broadcast television network. It was founded by RCA in 1926, began as a radio network and later developed television. With ABC and CBS it is one of the three traditional U.S. broadcast networks; it passed to General Electric with RCA in 1986, merged with Universal to form NBCUniversal in 2004, has been controlled by Comcast since 2011, and is one of the five networks that rotate in the White House television pool.Open the full entry in a program sponsored by Monsanto Chemical Company; President James P. Baxter had urged alumni to tune in.⁠[1]

On June 18, 1950, the college held its first outdoor Commencement on the lawn behind Chapin Hall, awarding 328 B.A. degrees; 176 graduates were World War II veterans and 22 reserve commissions were awarded, and nine B.A. degrees had been conferred that February. Honorary degrees went to Charles F. Boyton (1928), Samuel E. Morison, James R. Miller, Charles D. Makepeace and Edwin C. Kendall.⁠[1]

On January 2, 1951, a fire reduced West College to a sagging shell. On September 29, 1951, Gelett Burgess, author of the “Purple Cow” verses, died at 85 in Carmel, CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a U.S. state on the Pacific coast; its capital is Sacramento and its largest city is Los Angeles. California was admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 39,538,223, the largest of any state.Open the full entry; the editors of the college humor magazine had taken “Purple Cow” as its title in October 1907.⁠[1]

Martin Luther King Jr.Martin Luther King Jr.Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) was an American Baptist minister and social activist who led the U.S. civil rights movement from the mid-1950s until his assassination in 1968. He headed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.Open the full entry spoke at Williams on April 16, 1961. On September 27, 1961, Hopkins Observatory was raised onto greased rails and began moving north to make room for the Prospect dormitory, its second move.⁠[1]

On June 30, 1962, the Angevine Committee released the report that eventually led to the end of the Williams fraternity system. The staff-handbook history states that the trustees that year took the first of a series of actions that replaced fraternities with a residential house system and that compulsory religious services ended in 1962; it adds that competitive admissions after World War II had raised selectivity and intellectual life.⁠[1][2]

On December 3, 1966, Williams students attended the first annual Inter-Collegiate Conference of African-American students, held at Columbia UniversityColumbia UniversityColumbia University, formally Columbia University in the City of New York, is a private research university in New York City and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1754 by royal charter from King George II as King's College, it is the oldest institution of higher education in New York State and the fifth oldest in the United States. It was renamed Columbia College in 1784 and adopted the university name and moved to Manhattan's Morningside Heights in 1896. It has 17 schools and four affiliated colleges, with 35,978 students enrolled in fall 2025. Legal scholar Jennifer L. Mnookin became president on July 1, 2026.Open the full entry. On October 8, 1967, Lady Bird Johnson spoke at Convocation and helped launch the Williams Center for Environmental Studies. The first Winter Study Program began on January 5, 1968; the staff-handbook history notes that the curriculum adopted a 4-1-4 structure.⁠[1][2]

On April 5, 1969, members of the Afro-American Student Association occupied Hopkins Hall to press demands for better opportunities for African-American students.⁠[1]

On June 8, 1969, the Board of Trustees approved admitting women on a regular coeducational basis beginning in fall 1971. On October 8, 1969, President Jack Sawyer announced that Williams would admit women as transfer students in fall 1970; the staff-handbook history states that women were admitted as degree candidates in 1970. On July 1, 1970, Nancy McIntire began work as the first female assistant dean at Williams, and on June 6, 1971, seven women received Williams diplomas from the president, the first women to do so.⁠[1][2]

On May 4, 1970, Williams students voted to strike in opposition to the Vietnam War.⁠[1]

On October 1, 1982, the Women’s Center moved from Mears to Hardy House. On September 9, 1984, President John Chandler announced the Williams-Exeter Programme, made possible by the purchase of four buildings in Oxford; the staff-handbook history states that the program, run with Exeter College at the University of OxfordUniversity of OxfordThe University of Oxford is a university in Oxford, England, where teaching existed in some form by 1096; it describes itself as the oldest university in the English-speaking world and is organised as a federal system of the university and dozens of self-governing colleges.Open the full entry, sends about 30 juniors a year for a year of study.⁠[1][2]

The staff-handbook history states that from fall 1988 each department introduced at least one tutorial, and that by 1992 about 40 percent of graduates had taken one; the curriculum also added majors and interdisciplinary programs and expanded Chinese and Japanese to four-year sequences.⁠[2]

On October 14, 1990, the Jewish Religious Center was dedicated; Rabbi Alan Berg led the Torah procession to the new building, which replaced the small Kuskin Room in Thompson Memorial Chapel.⁠[1]

Sally Kornbluth, the 18th president of the Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyMassachusetts Institute of TechnologyThe Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. It received its charter from Massachusetts in 1861, admitted its first students in 1865 and moved from Boston to its present campus in 1916. As of October 2025 it had 11,816 students, and it counts 106 Nobel laureates among members of its community.Open the full entry, received a BA in political science from Williams College in 1982.⁠[7]

On October 22, 2000, Morton Owen Schapiro was inducted as the 16th president of Williams College.⁠[1]

On November 10, 2007, Williams hosted the 150th Saturday-morning edition of ESPN College GameDay, featuring the 122nd Williams–Amherst Homecoming game, the program’s first broadcast from a Division III school; Williams won 20–0.⁠[1]

On July 7, 2008, the College Archives and Chapin Library began moving their collections out of Stetson Hall ahead of its renovation and a new library; staff packed more than 13,900 boxes and crates over several months, and the move took a little over three weeks.⁠[1]

Adam Falk was inducted as the 17th president of Williams College in April 2010. He served for eight years and left in 2017 for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, after which Tiku Majumder served as interim president.⁠[1][8]

On March 13, 2018, Williams College named Maud S. Mandel, dean of the college and professor of history and Judaic studies at Brown UniversityBrown UniversityBrown University is a private nonprofit research university in Providence, Rhode Island, and a member of the Ivy League. Chartered by Rhode Island's colonial legislature in 1764, it is known for its undergraduate Open Curriculum, which has no common required core. Christina H. Paxson, president since July 2012, announced on August 3, 2026, that the 2026–27 academic year would be her last in office. As of October 1, 2026, the search for Brown's 20th president remained underway.Open the full entry, its 18th president. WAMC wrote that day that she would take office on July 1, 2018, while the college’s August 2018 news release states that she became the 18th president in March 2018. iBerkshires describes her as the first woman president in the college’s 225-year history.⁠[8][3][9]

Mandel was raised in Princeton, New Jersey, and earned a B.A. from Oberlin College in 1989 and a Ph.D. from the University of MichiganUniversity of MichiganThe University of Michigan is a university founded in Detroit in 1817 that moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1837; it is governed by a statewide-elected Board of Regents and also has campuses in Dearborn and Flint.Open the full entry in 1998. She spent about 20 years at Brown University, first on the faculty and from 2014 as Dean of the College, where she helped open the First-Generation College and Low-Income Student Center (FLi Center). Her scholarship examines how policies of inclusion and exclusion in 20th-century France affected ethnic and religious minorities, especially Jews, Armenians and Muslim North Africans, and has been supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies and the American Philosophical Society, among others. In her induction remarks she recounted that her family fled the Holocaust in the 1930s, that their refugee ship was denied entry to the United States and Great Britain later gave them sanctuary, and that her mother survived the voyage on the St. Louis and emigrated to the United States at age 9.⁠[3][9]

Her induction took place in Chapin Hall from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m. on September 8, 2018: Michael R. Eisenson ’77, chair of the board of trustees, presented her with a copy of the college’s charter, Brown University President Christina H. Paxson gave a welcoming address, and former presidents Adam Falk and Francis Oakley attended; the ceremony was simulcast on the MainStage of the ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance and in Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall in the Bernhard Music Center and livestreamed online.⁠[3][9]

On April 13, 2022, Williams College announced that from the fall 2022 semester its entire financial aid program would become “all-grant”: recipients receive 100 percent of their Williams award as grants that need not be repaid, loans are eliminated from all awards, and required campus jobs and summer earnings are replaced with equivalent grants. The college described it as the nation’s first such program; it covered 1,100 current students, about 53 percent of undergraduates, the program costs $6.75 million a year, and the aid budget rises to $77.5 million a year. Students may still work on campus and keep their earnings.⁠[10][11]

In March 2024 Pamela Franks, director of the Williams College Museum of Art, described the design of its new building: designed by the Brooklyn firm SO-IL, led by Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu, on the former Williams Inn site by the rotary where Routes 2 and 7 meet in the center of Williamstown, it is the first purpose-built building for the museum, all-electric and of mass timber, with energy use expected to be about 70 percent below the benchmark for similar museums; groundbreaking was planned for fall 2024 and opening for May 2027 if all went well. The museum’s home, Lawrence Hall, is almost a century old and was last expanded in 1986.⁠[12]

In spring 2024 an anonymous donor gave the college $25 million for the new art museum, for athletics and wellbeing ($10 million) and for the all-grant financial aid program ($5 million). President Mandel called the museum “a stake in the ground for Williams in the humanities.” That year the college demolished its fieldhouse after finding structural problems and planned a new multipurpose recreation center to open in 2025.⁠[13]

On October 28, 2024, the college announced $105,820,000 in tax-exempt bonds issued on its behalf by MassDevelopment, the state’s development finance agency, with Goldman SachsGoldman SachsGoldman Sachs is an American financial services group headquartered in New York whose businesses include investment banking, securities trading, asset management, and wealth management. It traces its origins to the commercial paper business Marcus Goldman founded in 1869; it listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1999 under the ticker GS and became a bank holding company in 2008. David Solomon serves as chairman and chief executive officer.Open the full entry as lead underwriter, to build a new art museum and multipurpose recreation center, carry out its energy and carbon master plan, renovate dormitories and dining facilities, and reimburse costs of the Davis Center. The museum was expected to cost $175 million, of which the college planned to raise $100 million through donations. MassDevelopment had previously issued bonds for the college in 2011, 2013, 2016 and 2017.⁠[14]

College Navigator data from the National Center for Education Statistics show that in fall 2024 Williams College had 2,164 students, 2,115 undergraduates and 49 graduate students, with 320 full-time and 76 part-time instructional staff and a student-to-faculty ratio of 6 to 1. In fall 2024 it had 15,411 undergraduate applicants, admitted 8 percent, and 43 percent of those admitted enrolled. It awarded 493 bachelor’s and 44 master’s degrees in 2023–2024, and undergraduate tuition and fees for 2024–2025 were $68,560.⁠[15]

The same data show that in fall 2024 undergraduates were 52 percent female and 48 percent male, and that 11 percent of first-time degree-seeking students were from Massachusetts, 77 percent from other states and 11 percent from abroad; the retention rate for the fall 2023 full-time cohort was 97 percent and the overall graduation rate for the fall 2018 cohort was 94 percent. The college competes in NCAA Division III and has been accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education since December 1, 1929.⁠[15]

The student newspaper the Williams Record wrote in November 2025 that in fiscal year 2025, which ended June 30, 2025, the endowment returned 11.7 percent (8.7 percent after inflation), an investment gain of $420.8 million, for a market value of $3.93 billion and a 10-year annualized return of 9.4 percent; it had reached a high of $4.2 billion in 2021 after a 49.9 percent return and declined in 2022 and 2023. The chief investment officer is Abigail Wattley ’05. The Investment Office website lists figures for 2023: an investment pool of $3.5 billion, a 10-year annualized return of 9.9 percent, and endowment support for more than 50 percent of spending per student.⁠[16][17]

The report adds that the 2026 operating budget plans to draw $179 million from the endowment, about half of the college’s operating expenses for the year. Congress raised the endowment tax rate from 1.4 percent to 8 percent for the wealthiest institutions, but Williams was exempt under an exception for schools with fewer than 3,000 students and no longer pays the endowment tax. The college also cut costs: from fall 2027, students studying abroad who are not on financial aid will pay full Williams tuition; the employee health plan was adjusted to raise staff contributions; and the dependent tuition grant for employees hired after July 1, 2026, is capped at $20,000 per dependent, down from $36,085. The staff-handbook history states that Ephraim Williams’s original $9,297 bequest has grown into an endowment of about $770 million, without giving a year for that figure.⁠[16][2]

In October 2025 the federal government sent nine universities a memo titled “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” under which signatories would ban the use of race or sex in hiring and admissions, freeze tuition for five years and cap international undergraduate enrollment at 15 percent, among other terms, in exchange for favorable access to federal funds; the recipients were the University of Arizona, Brown University, Dartmouth CollegeDartmouth CollegeDartmouth College is a private institution of higher education in Hanover, New Hampshire, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded by Eleazar Wheelock, it received a royal charter on December 13, 1769. The 1819 Supreme Court ruling in Dartmouth College v. Woodward preserved its private status. Alongside undergraduate liberal arts education, Dartmouth includes the Geisel, Thayer, Tuck and Guarini schools. It enrolled 7,273 students in fall 2025 and held a $9 billion endowment at June 30, 2025. Sian Leah Beilock, in office since June 2023, remained president as of October 2026.Open the full entry, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of PennsylvaniaUniversity of PennsylvaniaThe University of Pennsylvania, commonly called Penn, is a private research university and Ivy League member in Philadelphia. It traces its origins to a 1740 charity-school project; Benjamin Franklin proposed his academy in 1749, classes began in 1751, and a 1791 merger established the institution under its present name. Penn has 12 schools, with undergraduate education concentrated in arts and sciences, engineering, nursing and Wharton. Enrollment totaled 29,384 in fall 2025, and the fiscal 2025 endowment was $24.81 billion. As of October 2026, J. Larry Jameson was president, with his term scheduled to end on June 30, 2027.Open the full entry, the University of Southern CaliforniaUniversity of Southern CaliforniaThe University of Southern California (USC) is a private research university in Los Angeles, California, planned by a group led by Judge Robert Maclay Widney and opened to students in 1880.Open the full entry, the University of Texas at Austin, Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia. Williams was not among them. In an all-campus email on October 6, Mandel wrote that the Compact “threatens to undermine academic independence” and set out five principles for a “more constructive” compact: freedom of inquiry, open-mindedness, institutional autonomy, self-critique and reform, and accountability and due process.⁠[18]

iBerkshires wrote on May 3, 2026, that Williams College’s 237th Commencement was scheduled for 10 a.m. on June 7, 2026, on the Williams Quad, with Grammy-winning jazz vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant as principal speaker, and that former ABCABCABC (American Broadcasting Company) is an American commercial broadcast television network. It grew out of NBC’s Blue radio network, took its name after becoming independent in 1943, developed into a national television network after merging with United Paramount Theatres in 1953, was acquired by Capital Cities in 1985, and has been owned by The Walt Disney Company since 1996. With CBS and NBC it is one of the three traditional U.S. broadcast networks, and it is one of the five networks that rotate in the White House television pool.Open the full entry News anchor Dan Harris would give the baccalaureate lecture at 5 p.m. on June 6 in Chapin Hall.⁠[19]

As of November 2026, the website of the Office of the President lists Maud S. Mandel as president and as professor of history and of the Program in Jewish Studies.⁠[20]

The college’s “About” page states that Williams has about 2,100 students and, besides undergraduate education, two graduate programs: a two-year master’s in the history of art offered with the Clark Art Institute, and a yearlong master’s for public-sector economists from low- and middle-income countries. Admission decisions for U.S. applicants are made without regard to ability to pay, the college meets 100 percent of demonstrated need for all enrolled students regardless of citizenship, and more than half of students receive aid.⁠[5]

Encyclopædia Britannica states that Williams offers undergraduate liberal arts programs and graduate programs in fine and applied arts and the social sciences, with accelerated and honours programs, independent study and study abroad; it takes part in the Twelve College Exchange and has cross-registration with the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (formerly North Adams State College) and Bennington College. Chapin Hall houses the Chapin Library of Rare Books, and Lawrence Hall is home to the Williams College Museum of Art. WAMC wrote in 2024 that the museum holds 15,000 works from the college collection, used by 30 academic departments in as many as 130 courses, and that the college has required physical education of all students for more than 100 years and its outing club has more than 800 student members.⁠[4][13]

The staff-handbook history states that students identifying with American minority groups rose to 25 percent, and faculty to almost 13 percent (the page gives no year).⁠[2]

The college’s 2018 news release lists the presidents before Mandel (alphabetically, with life dates): James Phinney Baxter III (1893–1975), Franklin Carter (1837–1919), Paul Ansel Chadbourne (1823–1883), John Wesley Chandler (born 1923), Tyler Dennett (1882–1949), Adam Falk (born 1965), Ebenezer Fitch (1756–1833), Harry Augustus Garfield (1863–1942), Edward Dorr Griffin (1770–1837), John Haskell Hewitt (1835–1920), Henry Hopkins (1837–1908), Mark Hopkins (1802–1887), Protik Majumder (born 1960), Zephaniah Swift Moore (1770–1823), Francis Christopher Oakley (born 1931), Harry Charles Payne (1947–2008), John Edward Sawyer (1917–1995), Morton Owen Schapiro (born 1953), Carl W. Vogt (born 1936) and William G. Wagner (born 1950).⁠[3]

Besides James A. Garfield, Encyclopædia Britannica names the poet William Cullen Bryant as a notable alumnus and states that he is said to have written “Thanatopsis” while there. Samuel Chapman Armstrong, Class of 1862, born on Maui on January 30, 1839, founded Hampton Institute.⁠[4][1]

Adam PollackAdam PollackAdam Pollack is an entrepreneur and venture capitalist who co-founded the Denver-based mortgage company Accept.inc (formerly BoardRE) and served as its CEO, and who was selected as a Thiel Fellow in 2019; the company was acquired by HomeLight in 2022, and he is now a partner at the venture capital firm Drive Capital.Open the full entry, selected for the Thiel FellowshipThiel FellowshipThe Thiel Fellowship is a two-year grant program started by investor Peter Thiel and run by the Thiel Foundation that funds young people who skip or stop out of college to build new things instead. The program has been criticized by figures in education for encouraging young people to leave college.Open the full entry in 2019 for BoardRE, is listed on his Y Combinator founder page as an alumnus of Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry and Williams College.⁠[21][22]

Williams College: Official website: https://www.williams.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[5]

Williams College Archives and Special Collections: Official website: https://specialcollections.williams.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[1]

Williams College Office of the President: Official website: https://president.williams.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[20]

Williams College Investment Office: Official website: https://investment.williams.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[17]