Comrades of the Quest: An Oral History of Reed College

“The Ideal College is a college free to pursue its mission with unobscured vision of the truth, and power to proclaim the truth without fear or favor of politicians, or religious sects, or benefactors, or public cries, or its own administrative machinery.” —William Trufant Foster


Visionary. Iconoclast. Rebel. William Trufant Foster set out in 1911 to launch the “ideal college,” and succeeded in building an intellectual liberal arts powerhouse that over the next century would perpetually seek...