Philip Lindsley (1786–1855) was an American Presbyterian minister, educator and classicist. He served as the acting president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) from 1822 to 1824, and as the first president of the now-defunct University of Nashville from 1824 to 1850.
Early life
Philip Lindsley was born in Basking Ridge, New Jersey on December 21, 1786.[1][2][3][4] He was educated in private academies and graduated from the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University.[1]
In December 1824, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to take up the presidency of Cumberland College.[1][5][6] Among his first acts as president was to request that its name be changed to the University of Nashville, a change that took effect about a year after his arrival.[5][6] He hired respected scholars as faculty in fields including classics, foreign languages, mathematics, and geology.[1] At the same time, he actively recruited students.[1] He also suggested starting a medical school.[5]
He resigned his position in 1850, when the university suspended operations as a result of the cholera epidemic which led to low enrollment and to financial difficulties.[5] His son, John Berrien Lindsley, became the university's president when it reopened in 1855.[5]
His ideas and ambitions regarding education had a lasting impact.[1] He promoted the Nashville city slogan "Athens of the South", a sobriquet coined by Leroy J. Halsey (1812-1896) that reflected his goal of making the University of Nashville into a nationally recognized institution.[1][3] He was an advocate for better education at all levels, becoming one of the first academics to urge the formal training of school teachers in normal schools.[1] He saw education as, "a great equalizer, a special right for the poor."[7] Additionally, in an essay entitled Thoughts on Slavery, he wrote, "Our slaves must be emancipated."[7] In the 1830s he published a pamphlet that argued that all children should be offered a broad academic education, including Greek, Latin, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, geography, and English.[1]
^ abcChristine M. Kreyling, Wesley Paine, Charles W. Warterfield, Susan Ford Wiltshire, Classical Nashville: Athens of the South, Nashville, Tennessee: Vanderbilt University Press, 1996, p. xiii
^ abChristine M. Kreyling, Wesley Paine, Charles W. Warterfield, Susan Ford Wiltshire, Classical Nashville: Athens of the South, Nashville, Tennessee: Vanderbilt University Press, 1996, p. 8
^ abcElijah Embree Hoss, William B. Reese, History of Nashville, Tenn., Nashville, Tennessee: C. Elder, 1890, p. 617 [1]
