Word: neilsons
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...salesman once fell into conversation with a goateed little fellow traveler in a smoking compartment, finally asked: "What do you do? My line is skirts." Replied President William Allan Neilson of Smith College: ''That's my line...
Last week Smith's Neilson journeyed from his Northampton, Mass. campus to nearby Springfield, to be the guest of honor at a City Club dinner celebrating his 20th anniversary as president of the largest resident college for women in the U. S. In the gathering of 400 Neilson admirers there were 18 college presidents and a liberal sprinkling of deans and professors. But there was very little solemnity...
Said Wheaton College's President John Edgar Park: "He has done a delightfully artistic job at Smith." Complained Wellesley's youthful Mildred Helen McAfee: "Dr. Neilson is constantly held up to us as a shining example!" Revealed Andover's Headmaster Claude Fuess, who studied English under Dr. Neilson at Columbia: "I remember when he did not think so much of girl students. In fact, he discouraged them by keeping his office in a constant fog of smoke." Radcliffe's Ada Louise Comstock, who once served as Smith's dean, recalled a Neilson lecture...
Smith's Neilson today seems to Smith's 2,000 girls and their parents the very model of a modern college president, although his strong opinions have occasionally differed from those of many Smith alumnae. He went to Northampton in 1917 from an English professorship at Harvard, where his tall German wife Elizabeth had been snubbed by War-minded faculty wives. Stanchly liberal, Dr. Neilson defended Sacco & Vanzetti, early advocated the recognition of Russia, invited such figures as Bertrand Russell and Harold Laski to speak at Smith...
President Neilson reformed at home by gradually abolishing the college's cliquish off-campus houses in favor of dormitories, introducing tutorial work in special honors courses, in general treating his girls as though they were not very different from men. Smith girls, who are inclined to be smart and well-balanced, respect President Neilson's wishes in such matters as not knitting or chewing gum in class. But when several Northampton residents once complained that his girls should pull their shades down at night before undressing, President Neilson observed that they should pull down their own instead. Once...