The story of America’s founding comes with a familiar cast and setting: young white men in powdered wigs, animated by Enlightenment ideals, pacing college greens and tavern floors, debating liberty into existence. 

Colonial colleges emerge as engines of revolution – hotbeds of radical thought that helped give birth to the nation. 

It’s a compelling story. It’s also incomplete. 

In this special America 250 edition of College Uncovered, GBH’s Kirk Carapezza pulls back the ivy to reveal how America’s colonial colleges actually worked – and the complicated role they played in the nation’s founding.

Suffolk University historian Robert Allison takes us to the Old Burying Ground just beyond Harvard Yard and describes a far less romantic version of campus life during the Revolution. In 1775, Harvard did not erupt in rebellion, Allison notes, it emptied out.

David Hoeveler, historian and author of Creating the American Mind: Intellect and Politics in the Colonial Colleges, explains that students were wrestling with big questions about liberty, resistance, and self-government – just not in the classroom.

University of Pennsylvania historian Kathleen Brown argues that colonial colleges weren’t just silent on slavery; many were built upon it. And independence did little to sever their ties to the British slave trade. 

Finally, Laurie Patton, president of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, reflects on why a group of colonial college graduates led by John Adams founded the organization in Cambridge in 1780, its enduring mission, and what its history can teach us in this deeply fraught political and social moment.

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Credits:

Host and Producer: Kirk Carapezza 

Editors: Azita Ghahramani, Jennifer Moore and Adeline Sire 

Executive Producer: Lee Hill  

Mixing and Sound Design: David Goodman & Gary Mott

Theme Song and original music: Left-Roman

Artwork: Matt Welch 

Project Manager: Isabel Hibbard

Consulting Producer and Head of GBH Podcasts: Devin Maverick Robins

"College Uncovered" is a production of GBH News