Antioch: The Dixon Era, 1959-1975 [Paperback]

Edla Dixon (Editor)

Product Details

• Paperback: 232 pages
• Publisher: Eddie Dixon (May 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0962192139
• ISBN-13: 978-0962192135
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,587,861 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars BEST ANTIOCH COLLEGE HISTORY BOOK EVER!, August 6, 2003

By 

Dr. Yazz Cudd, Antioch College (YSO) '66 (Freeland, MD USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Antioch: The Dixon Era, 1959-1975 (Paperback)

August 6, 2003 ... THE DIXON ERA 1959-1975 by Edla Mills Dixon, Antioch College '41 (Editor), and Dr. James P. Dixon, Antioch College '38 is beyond question the single best and most important history and analysis book about Antioch College which was founded in 1852 in Yellow Springs, Ohio with Horace Mann as its first Antioch president.

The book was published in 1991 by Bastille Books in Saco, Maine and written by Dr. and Mrs. James P. Dixon, MD (Harvard Med. School '43). Dr. Jim Dixon, Antioch '38, was president of Antioch College from 1959 through 1975 when he was illegally fired by then Antioch Board Chairman Larry Pearl, Antioch '55, who held an illegal meeting at the Dayton, Ohio airport of Antioch trustees, and in spite of the fact there was not a quorum at that meeting, claimed (wrongly) a majority of the trustees voted to remove Dixon, even though this was not the case.

Dixon failed to protest the decision, accepted the firing by Pearl (probably due to sheer exhaustion at being embattled too long in a brutal job), and left Antioch after 16 years as Antioch president, the longest presidential term any Antioch CEO ever served in a history which began in 1852.

Dr. James P. Dixon '38 was and is (he is still living as of this writing) both a genius and a comic book New England aristocrat, complete with Mass. Bay Colony descendants and long time credentials in Massachusetts. He rode the bucking bronco that is the Antioch College presidency for almost two decades, and the College made more progress during his presidency than at any other period in its history. What Charles Eliot was to Harvard, James Dixon was and is to Antioch.

In 1978, successor Antioch College president Dr. William Birenbaum reorganized Antioch College and its then 30 additional campuses and independent degree programs scattered all across the USA and abroad into the (then) new Antioch University. But in fact it was Dixon who was reponsible for the growth of Antioch's influence and educational power which compelled this change. Under Dixon's watch, Antioch went from being a pleasant and repected sophomoric and provincial college started in 19th century Ohio, ranked with Kenyon and Oberlin Colleges there, cranking out doctors, lawyers, and other petty bourgeois types requiring a college degree to a true University, like Harvard, Oxford, Heidelburg, and Bologna.

When Dixon left, it had, in addition to the undergrad college started in 1852, every type grad school but a medical school, ironic since Dixon himself was an Antioch grad who went onto become a prominent and brilliant public health administrator physician who led programs in both Philadelphia and Denver before coming to Antioch as president in 1959 when he was 38 years old.

After his Antioch president years, he moved to Durham, NC and taught public health at the U. of North Carolina Med. School and also the Walden U. Ph.D. program while being very active with the N. Carolina ACLU. He took more than a decade to compose his memoirs (which is what ANTIOCH: THE DIXON ERA are), and they were finally made public in his book in 1991.

The book is wonderfully indexed, maddenly incomplete in many ways. The incompleteness is totally forgiveable, given the ground he had to cover. No Antioch president since Horace Mann in 1852 EVER prepared a retrospective book about his/her Antioch presidency. All should have. Only Dixon did. He was perhaps Antioch College's greatest president ever, from Horace Mann in 1852 until the present day.

The book is hard to get, not available at Amazon.Com at this time (August 2003), but listed in the Amazon.Com database because its importance is well known. It is no doubt one of the most important single volumes ever published about American higher education and education generally. This is true because Antioch College and University are among America's most vital and important educational institutions.

ANTIOCH: THE DIXON ERA 1959-75 (1991 -- Bastille Books, Saco, Maine) is worth getting, reading, and re-reading by anyone who cares about quality education.