Amherst College history

The College owes its origin to the pious zeal of certain members of the Board of Trustees of the Academy, and the records of the Academy were the records of the College during the first four years of its existence, or until the granting of the charter in 1825."

In 1835, Amherst attempted to create a course of study parallel to the classical liberal arts education.

Amherst Academy closed in 1861, and the site was sold to the town of Amherst, which erected the Amity Street public school on it.

Amherst records one of the first uses of Latin honors of any American college, dating back to 1881.

The first (and so far only) Amherst graduate to serve as president of the United States was Calvin Coolidge, Class of 1895.

The college established the Black Studies Department in 1969.

In 1973, it launched the nation's first undergraduate neuroscience program.

In June 1976, they became the first female graduates of the college.

Lowell Gudmunson (Mount Holyoke College): Ph.D., University of Minnesota (1982). Professor.

In 1983, it established a Department of Asian Languages and Literatures, which was later to become the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations.

20th century United States Race and Ethnicity, Asian-American Women, Immigration.Lynda Morgan (Mount Holyoke College): Ph.D., Virginia (1986). Associate Professor.

Ernest Benz (Smith College): Ph.D., University of Toronto (1988). Associate Professor.

Richard Lim (Smith College): Ph.D., Princeton (1991). Associate Professor.

Modern Germany, Central and Eastern Europe.Jutta Sperling (Hampshire College): Ph.D., Stanford (1995). Associate Professor.

Holly Hanson (Mount Holyoke College): Ph.D. University of Florida, 1997.

Rick A. Lopez (Amherst College): Ph.D., Yale (2001). Associate Professor.

Modern European Cultural History with a research agenda and publications in German Jewish history and women’s history.Jennifer Guglielmo (Smith College): Ph.D., University of Minnesota (2003). Associate Professor.

African-American history, especially slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction.Hilary Moss (Amherst College): Ph.D., Brandeis University (2004). Assistant Professor of History and Black Studies.

However, an economic downturn fueled public dissatisfaction with the administration of New Democracy Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis, and Papandreou led PASOK to a landslide victory at the polls on October 4, 2009.

On June 15, 2011, as the EU contemplated delivery of another installment of the bailout, mounting dissatisfaction with the draconian budget cuts and tax increases and with Papandreou’s handling of the crisis led to mass demonstrations at the parliament building that erupted into violence.

In March 2013 the faculty adopted an open-access policy.