Washington and Lee University

an offer to become president of Washington College. Despite suffering financial hardship at the time and having offers for several business opportunities, he said he chose to become the college president because he wanted to train "young men to do their duty". (Lee believed that the business offers were meant primarily to trade on his name). During his tenure, Lee established the first journalism courses (which were limited and only lasted several years) and added engineering courses, a business school, and law school to the college curriculum, under the conviction that those occupations should be intimately and inextricably linked with the liberal arts. That was a radical idea: engineering, journalism, and law had always been considered technical crafts, not intellectual endeavors, and the study of business was viewed with skepticism.
Lee's emphasis on student self-governance for Washington College remains the distinguishing character of the student-run Honor System today. And, ardent about restoring national …