Italian Americans
Italian Americans are citizens of the United States of America who are of Italian descent. Italian Americans are the fourth largest ethnic group of European Americans behind German Americans, Irish Americans and English Americans. About 5.5 million Italians immigrated to the United States from 1820 to 2004. In 1870, there were fewer than 25,000 Italian immigrants in America, many of them Northern Italian refugees from the wars that accompanied the Risorgimento—the struggle for Italian unification and independence from foreign rule which ended in 1871. Immigration began to increase during the 1870s, when more than twice as many Italians immigrated than during the five previous decades combined; the 1870s were followed by the greatest surge of immigration, which occurred between 1880 and 1914 and brought more than 4 million Italians to the United States, the majority being from Southern Italy and Sicily, with many having agrarian backgrounds. This period of large-scale immigration ended abruptly with the onset of the First World War in 1914 and, except for one year, never resumed.
Further immigration was limited by several laws Congress passed in the 1920s. 84% of the Italian immigrants came from Southern Italy and Sicily, still rural and agricultural, where much of the populace had been impoverished by centuries of foreign misrule, an oppressive taxation system imposed after Italian unification in 1861. After unification, the Italian government encouraged emigration to relieve economic pressures in the South. After the American Civil War, which resulted in over a half million killed or wounded, immigrant workers were recruited from Italy and elsewhere to fill the labor shortage caused by the war. In the United States, most Italians began their new lives as manual laborers in eastern cities, mining camps and farms; the descendants of the Italian immigrants rose from a lower economic class in the first generation to a level comparable to the national average by 1970. The Italian community has been characterized by strong ties to family, the Roman Catholic Church, fraternal organizations, political parties.
Italian navigators and explorers played a key role in the exploration and settlement of the Americas by Europeans. Christopher Columbus, the explorer who first reached the Americas in 1492–1504, was Italian. Another notable Italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci, who explored the east coast of South America between 1499 and 1502, is the source of the name America. England's claims in North America were based on the voyages of the Italian explorer John Cabot and his son Sebastian Cabot in the early 16th century. In 1524 the Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano was the first European to map the Atlantic coast of today's United States, to enter New York Bay. A number of Italian navigators and explorers in the employ of Spain and France were involved in exploring and mapping their territories, in establishing settlements. In 1539, Marco da Nizza, explored the territory that became the states of Arizona and New Mexico; the first Italian to reside in America was Pietro Cesare Alberti, a Venetian seaman who, in 1635, settled in what would become New York City.
A small wave of Protestants, known as Waldensians, who were of French and northern Italian heritage, occurred during the 17th century. The first Waldensians began arriving around 1640, with the majority coming between 1654 and 1663, they spread out across what was called New Netherland, what would become New York, New Jersey and the Lower Delaware River regions. The total American Waldensian population that immigrated to New Netherland is unknown. Henri de Tonti, together with the French explorer LaSalle, explored the Great Lakes region. De Tonti founded the first European settlement in Illinois in 1679, in Arkansas in 1683. With LaSalle, he co-founded New Orleans, was governor of the Louisiana Territory for the next 20 years, his brother Alphonse de Tonty, with French explorer Antoine Cadillac, was the co-founder of Detroit in 1701, was its acting colonial governor for 12 years. Spain and France were Catholic countries and sent many missionaries to convert the native American population. Included among these missionaries were numerous Italians.
In 1519-25, Alessandro Geraldini was the first Catholic bishop in the Americas, at Santo Domingo. Father François-Joseph Bressani labored among the Algonquin and Huron Indians in the early 17th century. Between 1687 and 1711, the southwest and California were explored and mapped by Italian Jesuit priest Eusebio Kino; the Taliaferro family from Venice, was one of the first families to settle in Virginia. Francesco Maria de Reggio, an Italian nobleman who served under the French, came to Louisiana in 1751 where he held the title of Captain General of Louisiana until 1763. Another colonial, merchant Francis Ferrari of Genoa, was naturalized as a citizen of Rhode Island in 1752, he died in 1753 and in his will speaks of Genoa, his ownership of three ships, cargo of wine and his wife Mary, who went on to own one of the oldest coffee houses in America, the Merchant Coffee House of New York on Wall Street at Water St. Her Merchant Coffee House moved across Wall Street in 1772, retaining the same patronage.
Today, the descendants of the Alberti/Burtis, Fonda, Reggio an
Civil liberties
Civil liberties or personal freedoms are personal guarantees and freedoms that the government cannot abridge, either by law or by judicial interpretation, without due process. Though the scope of the term differs between countries, civil liberties may include the freedom of conscience, freedom of press, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, the right to security and liberty, freedom of speech, the right to privacy, the right to equal treatment under the law and due process, the right to a fair trial, the right to life. Other civil liberties include the right to own property, the right to defend oneself, the right to bodily integrity. Within the distinctions between civil liberties and other types of liberty, distinctions exist between positive liberty/positive rights and negative liberty/negative rights. Many contemporary states have a constitution, a bill of rights, or similar constitutional documents that enumerate and seek to guarantee civil liberties. Other states have enacted similar laws through a variety of legal means, including signing and ratifying or otherwise giving effect to key conventions such as the European Convention on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
The existence of some claimed civil liberties is a matter of dispute, as are the extent of most civil rights. Controversial examples include property rights, reproductive rights, civil marriage; the degree that democracies have involved themselves in needs to take into fact the influence of terrorism. Whether the existence of victimless crimes infringes upon civil liberties is a matter of dispute. Another matter of debate is the suspension or alteration of certain civil liberties in times of war or state of emergency, including whether and to what extent this should occur; the formal concept of civil liberties is dated back to Magna Carta, an English legal charter agreed in 1215 which in turn was based on pre-existing documents, namely the Charter of Liberties. The Constitution of People's Republic of China its Fundamental Rights and Duties of Citizens, claims to protect many civil liberties. Taiwan, separated from China, has its own Constitution; the Fundamental Rights—embodied in Part III of the constitution—guarantee liberties such that all Indians can lead their lives in peace as citizens of India.
The six fundamental rights are right to equality, right to freedom, right against exploitation, right to freedom of religion and educational rights and right to constitutional remedies. These include individual rights common to most liberal democracies, incorporated in the fundamental law of the land and are enforceable in a court of law. Violations of these rights result in punishments as prescribed in the Indian Penal Code, subject to discretion of the judiciary; these rights are neither immune from constitutional amendments. They have been aimed at overturning the inequalities of pre-independence social practices, they resulted in abolishment of un-touchability and prohibit discrimination on the grounds of religion, caste, sex, or place of birth. They forbid unfree labour, they protect cultural and educational rights of ethnic and religious minorities by allowing them to preserve their languages and administer their own educational institutions. All people, irrespective of race, caste or sex, have the right to approach the High Courts or the Supreme Court for the enforcement of their fundamental rights.
It is not necessary. In public interest, anyone can initiate litigation in the court on their behalf; this is known as "Public interest litigation". High Court and Supreme Court judges can act on their own on the basis of media reports; the Fundamental Rights emphasize equality by guaranteeing to all citizens the access and use of public institutions and protections, irrespective of their background. The rights to life and personal liberty apply for persons of any nationality, while others, such as the freedom of speech and expression are applicable only to the citizens of India; the right to equality in matters of public employment cannot be conferred to overseas citizens of India. Fundamental Rights protect individuals from any arbitrary State actions, but some rights are enforceable against private individuals too. For instance, the constitution prohibits begar; these provisions act as a check both on State action and actions of private individuals. Fundamental Rights are not absolute and are subject to reasonable restrictions as necessary for the protection of national interest.
In the Kesavananda Bharati vs. state of Kerala case, the Supreme Court ruled that all provisions of the constitution, including Fundamental Rights can be amended. However, the Parliament cannot alter the basic structure of the constitution like secularism, federalism, separation of powers. Called the "Basic structure doctrine", this decision is regarded as an important part of Indian history. In the 1978 Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India case, the Supreme Court extended the doctrine's importance as superior to any parliamentary legislation. According to the verdict, no act of parliament can be considered a law if it violated the basic structure of the constitution; this landmark guarantee of Fundamental Rights was regarded as a unique example of judicial independence in preserving the sanctity of Fundamental Rights. The Fundamental Rights can only be altered by a constitutional amendment, hence their inclusion is a check not only on the executive branch, but on the Parliament and state legislatures.
The imposition of a state of em
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's second-oldest university in continuous operation, it grew from 1167 when Henry II banned English students from attending the University of Paris. After disputes between students and Oxford townsfolk in 1209, some academics fled north-east to Cambridge where they established what became the University of Cambridge; the two'ancient universities' are jointly called'Oxbridge'. The history and influence of the University of Oxford has made it one of the most prestigious universities in the world; the university is made up of 38 constituent colleges, a range of academic departments, which are organised into four divisions. All the colleges are self-governing institutions within the university, each controlling its own membership and with its own internal structure and activities, it does not have a main campus, its buildings and facilities are scattered throughout the city centre.
Undergraduate teaching at Oxford is organised around weekly tutorials at the colleges and halls, supported by classes, lectures and laboratory work provided by university faculties and departments. It operates the world's oldest university museum, as well as the largest university press in the world and the largest academic library system nationwide. In the fiscal year ending 31 July 2018, the university had a total income of £2.237 billion, of which £579.1 million was from research grants and contracts. The university is ranked first globally by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings as of 2019 and is ranked as among the world's top ten universities, it is ranked second in all major national league tables, behind Cambridge. Oxford has educated many notable alumni, including 27 prime ministers of the United Kingdom and many heads of state and government around the world; as of 2019, 69 Nobel Prize winners, 3 Fields Medalists, 6 Turing Award winners have studied, worked, or held visiting fellowships at the University of Oxford, while its alumni have won 160 Olympic medals.
Oxford is the home of numerous scholarships, including the Rhodes Scholarship, one of the oldest international graduate scholarship programmes. The University of Oxford has no known foundation date. Teaching at Oxford existed in some form as early as 1096, but it is unclear when a university came into being, it grew from 1167 when English students returned from the University of Paris. The historian Gerald of Wales lectured to such scholars in 1188 and the first known foreign scholar, Emo of Friesland, arrived in 1190; the head of the university had the title of chancellor from at least 1201, the masters were recognised as a universitas or corporation in 1231. The university was granted a royal charter in 1248 during the reign of King Henry III. After disputes between students and Oxford townsfolk in 1209, some academics fled from the violence to Cambridge forming the University of Cambridge; the students associated together on the basis of geographical origins, into two'nations', representing the North and the South.
In centuries, geographical origins continued to influence many students' affiliations when membership of a college or hall became customary in Oxford. In addition, members of many religious orders, including Dominicans, Franciscans and Augustinians, settled in Oxford in the mid-13th century, gained influence and maintained houses or halls for students. At about the same time, private benefactors established colleges as self-contained scholarly communities. Among the earliest such founders were William of Durham, who in 1249 endowed University College, John Balliol, father of a future King of Scots. Another founder, Walter de Merton, a Lord Chancellor of England and afterwards Bishop of Rochester, devised a series of regulations for college life. Thereafter, an increasing number of students lived in colleges rather than in halls and religious houses. In 1333–34, an attempt by some dissatisfied Oxford scholars to found a new university at Stamford, was blocked by the universities of Oxford and Cambridge petitioning King Edward III.
Thereafter, until the 1820s, no new universities were allowed to be founded in England in London. The new learning of the Renaissance influenced Oxford from the late 15th century onwards. Among university scholars of the period were William Grocyn, who contributed to the revival of Greek language studies, John Colet, the noted biblical scholar. With the English Reformation and the breaking of communion with the Roman Catholic Church, recusant scholars from Oxford fled to continental Europe, settling at the University of Douai; the method of teaching at Oxford was transformed from the medieval scholastic method to Renaissance education, although institutions associated with the university suffered losses of land and revenues. As a centre of learning and scholarship, Oxford's reputation declined in the Age of Enlightenment. In 1636 William Laud, the chancellor and Archbishop of Canterbury, codified the university's statutes. These, to a large extent, remained its gove
Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States and one of the most prestigious in the world, it is ranked first in the world by the ARWU Shanghai Ranking. Each class in the three-year J. D. program has 560 students, among the largest of the top 150 ranked law schools in the United States. The first-year class is broken into seven sections of 80 students, who take most first-year classes together. Harvard's uniquely large class size and prestige have led the law school to graduate a great many distinguished alumni in the judiciary and the business world. According to Harvard Law's 2015 ABA-required disclosures, 95% of the Class of 2014 passed the Bar exam. Harvard Law School graduates have accounted for 568 judicial clerkships in the past three years, including one-quarter of all Supreme Court clerkships, more than any other law school in the United States.
Harvard Law School's founding is traditionally linked to the funding of Harvard's first professorship in law, paid for from a bequest from the estate of Isaac Royall, Jr. a colonial American landowner and a slaveholder. Today, it is home to the largest academic law library in the world; the current dean of Harvard Law School is John F. Manning, who assumed the role on July 1, 2017; the law school has 328 faculty members. Harvard Law School's founding is traced to the establishment of a "law department" at Harvard in 1817. Dating the founding to the year of the creation of the law department makes Harvard Law the oldest continuously-operating law school in the nation. William & Mary Law School opened first in 1779, but closed due to the American Civil War, reopening in 1920; the University of Maryland School of Law was chartered in 1816, but did not begin classes until 1824, closed during the Civil War. The founding of the law department came two years after the establishment of Harvard's first endowed professorship in law, funded by a bequest from the estate of wealthy slaveowner Isaac Royall, Jr. in 1817.
Royall left 1,000 acres of land in Massachusetts to Harvard when he died in exile in Nova Scotia, where he fled as a British loyalist during the American Revolution, in 1781, "to be appropriated towards the endowing a Professor of Laws... or a Professor of Physick and Anatomy, whichever the said overseers and Corporation shall judge to be best." The value of the land, when liquidated in 1809, was $2,938. The Royalls were so involved in the slave trade, that "the labor of slaves underwrote the teaching of law in Cambridge." The dean of the law school traditionally held the Royall chair, deans Elena Kagan and Martha Minow declined the Royall chair due to its origins in the proceeds of slavery. Royall’s legacy at Harvard is lasting, Harvard Law School adopted the Royall family crest as apart of its school crest; that crest features with three bushels of wheat. Until the connection of the seal to the slave owning Royalls was unknown to many. According to The Harvard Crimson "Most Law School alumni and faculty were unaware of the story behind the seal."
In response to its ties to slavery, Harvard Law School decided to stop using the Royalls seal. It has yet to design a replacement seal. Royall's Medford estate, the Isaac Royall House, is now a museum which features the only remaining slave quarters in the northeast United States; the Royall family coat-of-arms, which shows three stacked wheat sheaves, was adopted as the school crest in 1936, topped with the university motto. In March 2016, following requests by students, the school decided to remove the emblem because of its association with slavery. By 1827, the school, with one faculty member, was struggling. Nathan Dane, a prominent alumnus of the college endowed the Dane Professorship of Law, insisting that it be given to Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story. For a while, the school was called "Dane Law School." In 1829, John H. Ashmun, son of Eli Porter Ashmun and brother of George Ashmun, accepted a professorship and closed his Northampton Law School, with many of his students following him to Harvard.
Story's belief in the need for an elite law school based on merit and dedicated to public service helped build the school's reputation at the time, although the contours of these beliefs have not been consistent throughout its history. Enrollment remained low through the 19th century as university legal education was considered to be of little added benefit to apprenticeships in legal practice. After first trying lowered admissions standards, in 1848 HLS eliminated admissions requirements entirely. In 1869, HLS eliminated examination requirements. In the 1870s, under Dean Christopher Columbus Langdell, HLS introduced what has become the standard first-year curriculum for American law schools – including classes in contracts, torts, criminal law, civil procedure. At Harvard, Langdell developed the case method of teaching law, now the dominant pedagogical model at U. S. law schools. Langdell's notion that law could be studied as a "science" gave university legal education a reason for being distinct from vocational preparation.
Critics at first defended the old lecture method because it was faster and cheaper and made fewer demands on faculty and students. Advocates said the case method had a sounder theoretical basis in scientific research and the inductive method. Langdell's graduates became leading professors at other law schools where they introduced the case method; the metho
Karl Marx
Karl Marx was a German philosopher, historian, political theorist and socialist revolutionary. Born in Trier, Marx studied law and philosophy at university, he married Jenny von Westphalen in 1843. Due to his political publications, Marx became stateless and lived in exile with his wife and children in London for decades, where he continued to develop his thought in collaboration with German thinker Friedrich Engels and publish his writings, researching in the reading room of the British Museum, his best-known titles are the 1848 pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto, the three-volume Das Kapital. His political and philosophical thought had enormous influence on subsequent intellectual and political history and his name has been used as an adjective, a noun and a school of social theory. Marx's theories about society and politics – collectively understood as Marxism – hold that human societies develop through class struggle. In capitalism, this manifests itself in the conflict between the ruling classes that control the means of production and the working classes that enable these means by selling their labour power in return for wages.
Employing a critical approach known as historical materialism, Marx predicted that, like previous socio-economic systems, capitalism produced internal tensions which would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by a new system: socialism. For Marx, class antagonisms under capitalism, owing in part to its instability and crisis-prone nature, would eventuate the working class' development of class consciousness, leading to their conquest of political power and the establishment of a classless, communist society constituted by a free association of producers. Marx pressed for its implementation, arguing that the working class should carry out organised revolutionary action to topple capitalism and bring about socio-economic emancipation. Marx has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history, his work has been both lauded and criticised, his work in economics laid the basis for much of the current understanding of labour and its relation to capital, subsequent economic thought.
Many intellectuals, labour unions and political parties worldwide have been influenced by Marx's work, with many modifying or adapting his ideas. Marx is cited as one of the principal architects of modern social science. Marx was born on 5 May 1818 to Henriette Pressburg, he was born at Brückengasse 664 in Trier, a town part of the Kingdom of Prussia's Province of the Lower Rhine. Marx was ethnically Jewish, his maternal grandfather was a Dutch rabbi, while his paternal line had supplied Trier's rabbis since 1723, a role taken by his grandfather Meier Halevi Marx. His father, as a child known as Herschel, was the first in the line to receive a secular education, he became a lawyer and lived a wealthy and middle-class existence, with his family owning a number of Moselle vineyards. Prior to his son's birth, after the abrogation of Jewish emancipation in the Rhineland, Herschel converted from Judaism to join the state Evangelical Church of Prussia, taking on the German forename Heinrich over the Yiddish Herschel.
Non-religious, Heinrich was a man of the Enlightenment, interested in the ideas of the philosophers Immanuel Kant and Voltaire. A classical liberal, he took part in agitation for a constitution and reforms in Prussia, at that time being an absolute monarchy. In 1815, Heinrich Marx began working as an attorney and in 1819 moved his family to a ten-room property near the Porta Nigra, his wife, Henriette Pressburg, was a Dutch Jewish woman from a prosperous business family that founded the company Philips Electronics. Her sister Sophie Pressburg married Lion Philips and was the grandmother of both Gerard and Anton Philips and great-grandmother to Frits Philips. Lion Philips was a wealthy Dutch tobacco manufacturer and industrialist, upon whom Karl and Jenny Marx would often come to rely for loans while they were exiled in London. Little is known of Marx's childhood; the third of nine children, he became the eldest son when his brother Moritz died in 1819. Young Marx and his surviving siblings, Hermann, Louise and Caroline, were baptised into the Lutheran Church in August 1824 and their mother in November 1825.
Young Marx was educated by his father until 1830, when he entered Trier High School, whose headmaster, Hugo Wyttenbach, was a friend of his father. By employing many liberal humanists as teachers, Wyttenbach incurred the anger of the local conservative government. Subsequently, police raided the school in 1832 and discovered that literature espousing political liberalism was being distributed among the students. Considering the distribution of such material a seditious act, the authorities instituted reforms and replaced several staff during Marx's attendance. In October 1835 at the age of 17, Marx travelled to the University of Bonn wishing to study philosophy and literature, but his father insisted on law as a more practical field. Due to a condition referred to as a "weak chest", Marx was excused from military duty when he turned 18. While at the University at Bonn, Marx joined the Poets' Club, a group containing political radicals that were monitored by the police. Marx joined the Trier Tavern Club drinking society, at one point serving as club co-president.
Additionally, Marx was involved in certain disputes, some of which became serious: in August 1836 he took part in a duel with a member of the university's Borussian Korps. Although his grades
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. Established pursuant to Article III of the U. S. Constitution in 1789, it has original jurisdiction over a narrow range of cases, including suits between two or more states and those involving ambassadors, it has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all federal court and state court cases that involve a point of federal constitutional or statutory law. The Court has the power of judicial review, the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution or an executive act for being unlawful. However, it may act only within the context of a case in an area of law over which it has jurisdiction; the court may decide cases having political overtones, but it has ruled that it does not have power to decide nonjusticiable political questions. Each year it agrees to hear about one hundred to one hundred fifty of the more than seven thousand cases that it is asked to review.
According to federal statute, the court consists of the Chief Justice of the United States and eight associate justices, all of whom are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Once appointed, justices have lifetime tenure unless they resign, retire, or are removed from office; each justice has a single vote in deciding. When the chief justice is in the majority, he decides. In modern discourse, justices are categorized as having conservative, moderate, or liberal philosophies of law and of judicial interpretation. While a far greater number of cases in recent history have been decided unanimously, decisions in cases of the highest profile have come down to just one single vote, exemplifying the justices' alignment according to these categories; the Court meets in the Supreme Court Building in Washington, D. C, its law enforcement arm is the Supreme Court of the United States Police. It was while debating the division of powers between the legislative and executive departments that delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention established the parameters for the national judiciary.
Creating a "third branch" of government was a novel idea. Early on, some delegates argued that national laws could be enforced by state courts, while others, including James Madison, advocated for a national judicial authority consisting of various tribunals chosen by the national legislature, it was proposed that the judiciary should have a role in checking the executive power to veto or revise laws. In the end, the Framers compromised by sketching only a general outline of the judiciary, vesting federal judicial power in "one supreme Court, in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish", they delineated neither the exact powers and prerogatives of the Supreme Court nor the organization of the Template:Judicial branch as a whole. The 1st United States Congress provided the detailed organization of a federal judiciary through the Judiciary Act of 1789; the Supreme Court, the country's highest judicial tribunal, was to sit in the nation's Capital and would be composed of a chief justice and five associate justices.
The act divided the country into judicial districts, which were in turn organized into circuits. Justices were required to "ride circuit" and hold circuit court twice a year in their assigned judicial district. After signing the act into law, President George Washington nominated the following people to serve on the court: John Jay for chief justice and John Rutledge, William Cushing, Robert H. Harrison, James Wilson, John Blair Jr. as associate justices. All six were confirmed by the Senate on September 26, 1789. Harrison, declined to serve. In his place, Washington nominated James Iredell; the Supreme Court held its inaugural session from February 2 through February 10, 1790, at the Royal Exchange in New York City the U. S. capital. A second session was held there in August 1790; the earliest sessions of the court were devoted to organizational proceedings, as the first cases did not reach it until 1791. When the national capital moved to Philadelphia in 1790, the Supreme Court did so as well.
After meeting at Independence Hall, the Court established its chambers at City Hall. Under Chief Justices Jay and Ellsworth, the Court heard few cases; as the Court had only six members, every decision that it made by a majority was made by two-thirds. However, Congress has always allowed less than the court's full membership to make decisions, starting with a quorum of four justices in 1789; the court lacked a home of its own and had little prestige, a situation not helped by the era's highest-profile case, Chisholm v. Georgia, reversed within two years by the adoption of the Eleventh Amendment; the court's power and prestige grew during the Marshall Court. Under Marshall, the court established the power of judicial review over acts of Congress, including specifying itself as the supreme expositor of the Constitution and making several important constitutional rulings that gave shape and substance to the balance of power between the federal government and states; the Marshall Court ended the practice of each justice issuin
Swarthmore College
Swarthmore College is a private liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1864, Swarthmore was one of the earliest coeducational colleges in the United States, it was established to be a college "...under the care of Friends, at which an education may be obtained equal to that of the best institutions of learning in our country." By 1906, Swarthmore had dropped its religious affiliation and became non-sectarian. Swarthmore is a member of the Tri-College Consortium along with Bryn Mawr and Haverford College, a cooperative academic arrangement between the three schools. Swarthmore is affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania through the Quaker Consortium, which allows for students to cross-register for classes at all four institutions. Swarthmore offers over 600 courses a year in more than 40 areas of study, including an ABET accredited engineering program which culminates with a Bachelor of Science in engineering. Swarthmore has a variety of sporting teams with a total of 22 Division III Varsity Intercollegiate Sports Teams and competes in the Centennial Conference, a group of private colleges in Pennsylvania and Maryland.
Despite the school's small size, Swarthmore alumni have attained prominence in a broad range of fields. Graduates include five Nobel Prize winners, 11 MacArthur Foundation fellows, 30 Rhodes Scholars, 27 Truman Scholars, 10 Marshall Scholars, 201 Fulbright Grantees, many noteworthy figures in law, science, business and other fields. Swarthmore counts 49 alumni as members of the National Academies of Science and Medicine. Swarthmore is ranked 3rd best liberal arts college in the country by U. S. News and World Report; the name "Swarthmore" has its roots in early Quaker history. In England, Swarthmoor Hall near the town of Ulverston, was the home of Thomas and Margaret Fell in 1652 when George Fox, fresh from his epiphany atop Pendle Hill in 1651, came to visit; the visitation turned into a long association, as Fox persuaded Thomas and Margaret Fell of his views. Swarthmoor was used for the first meetings of; the College was founded in 1864 by a committee of Quakers who were members of the Philadelphia, New York and Baltimore Yearly Meetings of the Religious Society of Friends.
Edward Parrish was its first president. Lucretia Mott and Martha Ellicott Tyson were among those Friends, who insisted that the new college of Swarthmore be coeducational. Edward Hicks Magill, the second president, served for 17 years, his daughter, Helen Magill, was in the first class to graduate in 1873. In the early 1900s, the College had a major collegiate American football program during the formation period of the soon-to-be nationwide sport, an active fraternity and sorority life; the 1921 appointment of Frank Aydelotte as President began the development of the school's current academic focus with his vision for the Honors program based on his experience as a Rhodes Scholar. During World War II, Swarthmore was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program, which offered students a path to a U. S. Navy commission. Wolfgang Köhler, Hans Wallach and Solomon Asch were noted psychologists who became professors at Swarthmore, a center for Gestalt psychology.
Both Wallach, Jewish, Köhler, not, had left Nazi Germany because of its discriminatory policies against Jews. Köhler came to Swarthmore in 1935 and served until his retirement in 1958. Wallach came in 1936, first as a researcher, teaching from 1942 until 1975. Asch, Polish-American and had immigrated as a child to the US in 1920, joined the faculty in 1947 and served until 1966, conducting his noted conformity experiments at Swarthmore; the 1960s and 1970s saw the construction of new buildings – the Sharples Dining Hall in 1964, the Worth Health Center in 1965, the Dana/Hallowell Residence Halls in 1967, the Lang Music Building in 1973. They saw a 1967 review of the college initiated by President Courtney Smith, a 1969 black protest movement, in which African-American students conducted an eight-day sit-in in the admissions office to demand increased black enrollment, the establishment of the Black Cultural Center and the Women's Resource Center; the Environmental Studies program and the Intercultural Center were established in 1992, in 1993 the Lang Performing Arts Center was opened.
In 1999 the college began purchasing renewable energy credits in the form of wind power, in the 2002–2003 academic year it constructed its first green roof. In 2008, Swarthmore's first mascot, Phineas the Phoenix, made its debut. Swarthmore's Oxbridge tutorial-inspired Honors Program allows students to take double-credit seminars from their third year and write honors theses. Seminars are composed of four to eight students. Students in seminars will write at least three ten-page papers per seminar, one of these papers is expanded into a 20–30 page paper by the end of the seminar. At the end of their final year, Honors students take oral and written examinations conducted by outside experts in their field. One student in each discipline is awarded
