William Edwards Huntington, Second President
from 1904–1911
William Huntington grew up in a strongly abolitionist farm family in Illinois and served in the Union Army during the Civil War, where he rose from private to first lieutenant. He attended the University of Wisconsin and the Boston University School of Theology. Upon receiving his PhD in 1882, he was appointed BU’s dean of the College of Liberal Arts. He was named the University’s second president in 1904. Huntington defined his tenure as an attempt to capture in higher education the energy of America’s burgeoning cities. He saw BU as a new type of “municipal” university, attentive to the needs and opportunities of urban life.
