.jpg){kind=link}
The story
Founded by Luther Rice in 1821.1
Founding
The first president of the United States, George Washington, long favored the establishment of a university in a central part of the United States. He advocated for its establishment to the U.S. Congress and others throughout his political career. Washington envisioned the new university would be in a central part of the new national capital, and he hoped the university would educate the most promising students from across the country while reaping the benefits of its location in Washington, D.C.
On December 14, 1799, George Washington died at his home in Mount Vernon. Washington included a bequest of his shares in the Potomac Company to establish the university in his last will and testament, though the shares lost their value and no educational institution ever benefited from them. Following his death, his desire was shared and encouraged by U.S. presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who both expressed the need to carry out Washington's plans.
In 1821, the Baptist missionary and leading minister Luther Rice secured funds from James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, John C. Calhoun, and other benefactors for a college to educate citizens from throughout the young nation in Washington, D.C. A large building was constructed on College Hill, which is now known as Meridian Hill. On February 9, 1821, President Monroe approved the congressional charter, creating the non-denominational Columbian College. Washingtonians, Congress, and the academic community celebrated this new institution as the fulfillment of Washington's vision. In 1824, the first commencement was considered an important event for the young city. In attendance were President Monroe, John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, the Marquis de Lafayette, and other dignitaries.
19th century
During the 19th century, most of the university's students came from the South. As the American Civil War commenced in 1861, many left their studies to join the Confederate States Army. Professor of anatomy A. Y. P. Garnett left the university to serve as Jefferson Davis' physician, and Robert King Stone stayed in Washington, D.C., serving as physician to Abraham Lincoln. The college was temporarily turned into a Union Army military camp during the Civil War. Poet Walt Whitman worked at this camp while visiting his wounded brother. In 1873, following the Civil War, Columbian College was renamed Columbian University and moved to an urban downtown location centered on 15th and H streets.
20th century
In 1904, Columbian University was renamed George Washington University following an agreement with the George Washington Memorial Association. In honor of George Washington, funds from the memorial association were donated to construct Lisner Auditorium.In 1912, the university moved its principal operations to the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Many of the colleges of the George Washington University are notable for their age and history. The law school is the oldest law school in the District of Columbia. The medical school is the 11th-oldest medical school in the nation and the first established in the nation's capital. The Columbian College was founded in 1821 and is the oldest unit of the university. The Elliott School of International Affairs was formalized in 1898.
In the 1930s, the university was a major center for theoretical physics. George Gamow, a cosmologist, developed the Big Bang theory at the university in the 1930s and 1940s. On January 26, 1939, Niels Bohr announced that Otto Hahn had successfully split the atom at the Fifth Washington Conference on theoretical physics in the Hall of Government.
During the Vietnam War era, Thurston Hall, an undergraduate dormitory housing 1,116 students at 1900 F Street NW, located three blocks from the White House, was a staging ground for student anti-war demonstrations. In 1996, the university purchased the Mount Vernon College for Women in the city's Palisades neighborhood that became the school's coeducational Mount Vernon Campus. The campus was first utilized in 1997 for women only but became co-educational in a matter of years. The Mount Vernon campus is now totally integrated into the GW community, serving as a complement to the Foggy Bottom campus. In 1999, GW hosted the Town Hall with President Clinton, the first presidential town hall to ever be webcast live.
21st century
In December 2006, the university appointed Johns Hopkins University provost Steven Knapp as the 16th President of the George Washington University, and his presidency began August 1, 2007. In 2017, Thomas LeBlanc, provost of the University of Miami, was named the President of the George Washington University. In 2016 the University closed the food court named J Street at its Foggy Bottom campus. In 2023 a new dining hall, inside Shenkman Hall, opened. During the period in between, on-campus food options were limited.
Read the full text
In July 2020, the university began forming special committees to look at possible name changes to an on-campus building and the school moniker. In a statement on the university's website, LeBlanc said one of the panels would examine the Colonials moniker, which critics said conjured up racism, violence, and genocide. In 2022, the Colonials name was officially retired. The following year, in 2023, the new nickname, the George Washington Revolutionaries, was announced. Another panel looked into renaming the Marvin Center, which was named after former school President Cloyd Heck Marvin, a segregationist.
In January 2022, LeBlanc was succeeded by former Washington University in St. Louis Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton as interim university president. A year later, in January 2023, the university named Ellen Granberg, provost at Rochester Institute of Technology, as the university's new president, with a start date of July 1, 2023. George Washington University joined the Association of American Universities in 2023.
In February 2025, Leo Terrell, the head of the Trump administration's Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, announced that he would investigate George Washington University as part of the U.S. Department of Justice's broader investigation into antisemitism on college campuses. In December 2025, the Russian government designated the university as an "undesirable organization" on charges of promoting anti-Russian sentiment and false claims about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In April 2026, GW announced that tuition would be free for families making less than $100,000 and half for families making $150,000, marking the most generous financial aid program in the District of Columbia. The university also announced a large expansion of merit aid.
From Wikipedia’s article on George Washington University, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5