Pedagogues and Protesters

On April 4, 1768, in the largest student strike at any colonial college, well over half the student body of Harvard College left school and went home in protest against new rules about class preparation. Many contemporaries found the cause trivial, but in the undergraduates’ own minds it was the culmination of months of tensions with the faculty. Through the lens of the daily journal entries of Stephen Peabody, the best surviving account of colonial college life, Conrad E. Wright will guide us through the relationships among students, faculty members, and administrators.