Alexander Meiklejohn, teacher and philosopher, was born in Rochdale, England, February 3, 1872, youngest of eight sons of James and Elizabeth (France) Meiklejohn. His father, who was of Scottish descent, brought his family to the United States in 1880 and settled in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where he was employed as a color designer and cloth printer. Alexander obtained his preliminary education in the schools of Pawtucket, and received his BA in 1893 and his MA in 1895, both from Brown University. In 1897 he received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Cornell.
He joined the faculty of Brown University as an instructor in philosophy in 1897, and was advanced to assistant professor in 1899, associate professor in 1903, and professor of logic and metaphysics in 1906, a post he held until 1912. He also served as undergraduate dean at Brown from 1901-1912. Of this period at Brown, Meiklejohn later wrote that he was working towards three objectives: (l) to build the morale of the academic community, (2) to keep control of athletics in the hands of the students, and (3) to “learn how to so teach philosophy that it would really affect the lives and ideas of the pupils.”
In 1912 Meiklejohn left Brown to become president of Amherst College. In accepting this post he stressed the need of a new approach to the problems of education, and in his inaugural address he assailed the elective system, asserting that the mission of a college was to provide the student with a unified interpretation of the world, rather than to equip him with the specialized training of a trade or professional school. In implementing this conception of a liberal arts college he made many changes in the curriculum and undertook, as his chief work, the “assembling of a faculty which would act as a group with a purpose.” Along with his administrative and teaching duties, he also involved Amherst in one of the country's first experiments in workers' education in nearby Holyoke, Mass. In 1923, however, under intense pressure from conservative faculty members, alumni, and trustees, who resented many of his innovations, Meiklejohn was forced to resign from the presidency. He was offered the chance of remaining in the College as Professor of Ethics but decided instead to leave Amherst completely, and in doing so, told his critics in a speech before the alumni that: “I differ from most of you on most of the issues of life and I am going to keep it up.”
Moving to New York City after the Amherst episode, which had attracted considerable national attention, he devoted his time to speaking and writing on educational problems. His theories and ideas were still exerting such a wide influence that, in 1925 the University of Wisconsin offered him an opportunity to try some even more fundamental innovations. From 1925 until 1938 he served that university as Brittingham Professor of Philosophy; and in 1927, with the cooperation of President Glenn Frank, he founded the Experimental College which, until its demise in 1933, was one of the most talked-about radical educational experiments ever undertaken in this country. It challenged the whole of educational tradition and custom of that time by establishing a totally integrated two year course of study without the usual courses, exams, or grades. The students lived together with their professors and instructors partially isolated from the rest of the campus. It was, in short, an attempt to form a true intellectual community in which Meiklejohn's life-long ambition of trying to under-stand and do something about the quality of life and education sought resolution. The Experimental College aroused lively controversy both within and outside the University of Wisconsin and was frequently attacked for radicalism and lack of discipline, but when the experiment ended, again due largely to conservative pressure, modified forms of the college's curriculum were adopted at many colleges and universities--including the University of Wisconsin.
In 1938 Meiklejohn, in semi-retirement from formal academic life, moved to Berkeley, California, where he once again demonstrated his zest for experimentation by founding the San Francisco School of Social Studies. This institution was one of the pioneers in the field of adult education. In this school small groups of adults from widely divergent backgrounds and interests studied key problems and values of contemporary life, particularly as they related to an analysis of the United States Constitution and concepts of freedom, always a major concern of Meiklejohn's. While the demands of the Second World War forced the closing of this venture, the experiment exerted considerable influence as a model for further developments in adult education.
In the next several years Meiklejohn spent much of his time writing and lecturing before civic and college groups, and after the war, mainly from 1946-1960, he was engaged in clarifying his interpretation of freedom of speech as embodied in the First Amendment in a series of books and articles. In 1955 he participated, with Zachariah Chafee, a professor of law at Harvard University, and Morris Ernst, a leading civil liberties attorney, in a landmark discussion of freedom of speech be-fore the U. S. Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights. In 1957 he submitted a petition for redress of grievances to the Speaker of the House of Representatives calling for the abolition of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Also reflecting his long-standing opposition to this committee was his activity with the National Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee which he served as an honorary chairman until his death.
Meiklejohn's interest in civil liberties and first amendment freedoms was also reflected in his long membership in the American Civil Liberties Union, of which he was one of the founders in 1920. He was for many years a member of the national committee of this organization, and at one time vice-chairman of the Northern California branch. In the summer of 1964 he joined the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in its efforts to arrive at a general theory of the First Amendment. Moreover, these libertarian interests were closely tied to Meiklejohn's ideas on education; he concluded that the primary task of American education was to inculcate a clear and effective awareness of the meaning of the social compact implied by the Constitution, both as a source of freedoms and of obligations.
His views on education, philosophy, and government were presented in his books, which included The Liberal College (1920), Freedom and the College (1923), Philosophy (1926), The Experimental College (1933) What Does America Mean? (1935), Education Between Two Worlds (1942), Free Speech and Its Relation to Self-Government (1948), Political Freedom--the Constitutional Powers of the People (1960), and a book published in mimeograph form for use in adult education classes, Education for a Free Society (1957). Meiklejohn also published numerous articles for scholarly journals, general magazines of opinion, and various college and university publications and alumni magazines.
Other activities of Meiklejohn included: vice-chairman for a number of years of the League for Industrial Democracy; a delegate to the UNESCO charter meeting in London in 1945; a visiting professor at Dartmouth College in 1938; a consultant to St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland; and a participant in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare's Conference on Social and Physical Environment Variables as Determinants of Mental Health.
Honors and awards received by Meiklejohn include the Teacher's Union for Defense of Constitutional Liberties Award in 1953, a Pacific Coast Unitarian Council Award in 1958, the Susan Culver Rosenberger Medal of Brown University in 1959, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Award of the National Lawyers Guild in 1960, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom Award in 1963, the highest peacetime civilian award this country can bestow. Also, in 1957 the alumni and former faculty members of the Experimental College established a fund for the annual presentation, through the American Association of University Professors, of the Alexander Meiklejohn Award to a college or university administrator, trustee, or governing board making an outstanding contribution to academic freedom. Both Brown and the University of Wisconsin also established lectureships in his name.
Honorary degrees received by Meiklejohn include an A.M. from Amherst in 1913, LL.D. degrees from Williams and Mount Holyoke Colleges in 1912, Brown University in 1913, Allegheny College in 1915, University of Vermont in 1916, University of California in 1933, and the University of Hawaii in 1937; and a Litt.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1964.
He was a member of the American Philosophical Association (president, 1923), the American Psychological Association, American Association of University Professors, American Association of Adult Education (president, 1942), Phi Beta Kappa, Theta Delta Chi, and other organizations.
An ardent lover of sports, he was a member of the first collegiate ice-hockey team in the country while a student at Brown, and he personally introduced the sport to Cornell while he was a doctoral student there. He also played soccer, cricket, squash, and tennis; the last-named game until his ninety-first birthday.
Meiklejohn was married twice; first to Nannine, daughter of Paolo LaVilla, and secondly, following his first wife's death, to Helen, daughter of Walter Goodnow Everett, chairman of the Philosophy Department at Brown University. He had four children, all by his first marriage.
Alexander Meikeljohn died in Berkeley, California, following a short illness, on December 16, 1964.
