John Carlisle Kilgo - Trinity College (Duke University)

Trinity College (Duke University)

John C. Kilgo was offered the presidency of Trinity College in 1894 at the age of thirty-three. Kilgo soon began acting on his desire to build the college into an institution with a national reputation. His presidency of Trinity College is notable for the 1903 Bassett Affair, wherein the university defended academic freedom. Kilgo's statement of Trinity College's aims were likely adopted in 1924 as the aims of Duke University.
"The aims of Duke University are to assert a faith in the eternal union of knowledge and religion set forth in the teachings and character of Jesus Christ, the Son of God; to advance learning in all lines of truth; to defend scholarship against all false notions and ideals; to develop a Christian love of freedom and truth; to promote a sincere spirit of tolerance; to discourage all partisan and sectarian strife; and to render the largest permanent service to the individual, the state, the nation, and the church. Unto these ends shall the affairs of this University always be administered."

Contemporaries characterized Kilgo as "a man afire" and students whispered among themselves that his pulse beat above normal. But they revered him and relished his bold attacks on narrow political and religious tenets of the time. However, one student did note as "the only flaw in his shining armor, a toleration for some Republican views," possibly a reference to his friendship with the Duke family. While well known for his stirring defense of academic freedom during the Bassett Affair, Kilgo also invited African-American leader Booker T. Washington to speak on the Trinity campus in 1896. Washington's appearance at Trinity was his first on a white Southern college campus. Additional principles firmly established during Kilgo's presidency include high standards in admissions, quality over numbers, the employment of the best possible faculty, and the equal education of women with men. As an indication of the national stature of the college, the President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching wrote Kilgo in 1909, "You are one of the few college presidents of this country who attempting to graduate each year an individualized group of men rather than a group that is merely more educated than when it came to you."

There is now a quad on the West Campus of Duke University named after Kilgo.