Lincoln Gordon Looks Out on Other Colleges

The Office of the President maintained a file of clippings and images from student protests across the country which helped to educate Dr. Lincoln Gordon about conditions at other universities. Johns Hopkins University had a more mild outbreak of student protest than other colleges and universities such as Columbia University and the University of Chicago, and there was no damage to property in any of the Homewood student protests, but Dr. Gordon remained extremely concerned about the threat of student radicals. 

Dr. Lincoln Gordon had a brief and tumultuous tenure as President of the Johns Hopkins University, serving from 1967 to 1971, when he was removed by a no-confidence vote by the Homewood faculty. Gordon had served during a period of intense social and political upheaval on campus, and in the midst of a budgetary crisis that his emphasis on administrative functions may have aggravated. The former U.S. Ambassador to Brazil left the university abruptly, forcing the Hopkins trustees to ask Milton Eisenhower to return as President until a new leader could be found. Steven Muller, who had just been hired as a provost only months before, was ultimately chosen as the next president of JHU, and he would serve from 1972 to 1990. Gordon's exit from the university is described in detail in the Hopkins Retrospective oral history account of longtime university secretary Ross Jones.