a tyrannical model, but Americans said, 'We will govern ourselves.' So, too, Hampshire asked, at its founding, the difficult questions of how we might educate ourselves... When I entered Hampshire, I found it to be the most exciting place on earth." Loren Pope wrote of Hampshire in the college guide Colleges That Change Lives: "Today no college has students whose intellectual thyroids are more active or whose minds are more compassionately engaged."
The events around the planned closure of the college that was made unsuccessful by student protests are the subject of the 2022 film The Unmaking of a College.
== Alumni and faculty ==
=== Notable alumni ===
Hampshire College alumni have received the Pulitzer and Hillman Prizes; the National Humanities Medal; Emmy, Academy, Peabody, Tony, Golden Globe and Grammy Awards; MacArthur, Fulbright, and Guggenheim Fellowships; the National Book Award; the American Book Award; the National Book Critics Circle Award; and the National Endowment for the Arts.
=== Notable …