Blueprints and Foundations: 1900–1945

The opening decades of the twentieth century would introduce new goals and restructure old traditions in American colleges and universities. Between 1900 and 1945, the nineteenth-century notion that higher education was largely a sanctuary for white, financially comfortable, American males, was increasingly being questioned, as the idea of inclusiveness was emerging. Delilah Beasley, among the first African-American journalists to write for a major newspaper, would help convince a city that diversity was a good thing on a college campus. Only a few thousand foreign students were enrolled in American institutions of higher education at the beginning of the century, but glowing reports of the benefits of diversity and internationalism in the college classroom were now circulating among the nation’s educators. The population of foreign students and scholars was rising in America, and they were largely welcomed, yet few provisions had been made for their support. Colleges and universities, the government, civic and religious organizations, caring individuals, and sometimes the international students themselves, took creative steps to address the unique needs of a growing student population. Rathi Rabindranath, the son of a famous poet from India, would be among those student innovators.