University of Southern California

Founding and early history

The University of Southern California was founded following the efforts of Judge Robert Maclay Widney, who helped secure donations from several key figures in early Los Angeles history: a Protestant nurseryman, Ozro Childs; an Irish Catholic former governor, John Gately Downey; and a German Jewish banker, Isaias Wolf Hellman. The three donated 308 acres to establish the campus and provided the necessary seed money for the construction of the first buildings. Originally operated in affiliation with the Methodist Church, the school mandated from the start that "no student would be denied admission because of race". The university is no longer affiliated with any church, having severed formal ties in 1952. When USC opened in 1880, the school had an enrollment of 53 students and a faculty of 10. Its first graduating class in 1884 was a class of three: two men and one woman, who was valedictorian.

USC was further expanded with the construction of Old College in 1887, which served as the college of Liberal Arts (now Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences). Although envisioned as the permanent centerpiece to the university, its age and lack of earthquake safety became major concerns as USC moved through the 20th century. The building was eventually demolished in 1948.

USC in the 20th century

Despite a growing student and faculty population, the university maintained most of its campus along Trousdale Parkway (then known as University Avenue). Beginning in 1919, architect John Parkinson developed a master plan for the university that expanded beyond this avenue, focusing on Romanesque buildings for which the university has become notable. Bovard Administration Building was completed in 1921 along this parkway, and remains one of the university's oldest and most iconic buildings. The Gwynn Wilson Student Union, Doheny Memorial Library, and Allan Hancock Foundation were completed in 1927, 1932, and 1940, respectively, and remain directly adjacent to the university's central quad (now Hahn Plaza). Many of these were constructed under President Rufus B. von KleinSmid, who spearheaded the creation of 19 buildings over 25 years.

The onset of World War II led to a transformation of campus life, with a shift in academic programs and student enrollment. Total enrollment fell 15%; military programs were instituted, and by the end of the war, 75% of male students were involved in some branch of the military. USC was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program, which offered students a path to a Navy commission. After the war ended, enrollment of veterans under the G.I. Bill soared to 24,000 by 1947, straining USC's facilities and resources.

In 1950, Founder's Hall (now Taper Hall of Humanities) was constructed, becoming the first new classroom space in a decade. University Avenue was closed to through traffic. In 1958, Norman Topping became president and initiated a campaign for capital construction to support USC's burgeoning population. With the assistance of architect William Pereira, USC constructed 99 buildings between 1961 and 1979. The university hosted some Olympic activities in 1984, and in 1990, Steven Sample became president of the university.

Origin of USC's mascot

USC students and athletes are known as Trojans, epitomized by the Trojan Shrine, nicknamed "Tommy Trojan", near the center of campus. Until 1912, USC students (especially athletes) were known as Fighting Methodists or Wesleyans, though neither name was approved by the university. Tommy's sword has been stolen so frequently that instead of replacing it with an expensive brass one each time, he is now provided with a wooden one. During a fateful track and field meet with Stanford University, the USC team was beaten early and seemingly conclusively. After only the first few events, it seemed implausible USC would ever win, but the team fought back, winning many of the later events, to lose only by a slight margin. After this contest, Los Angeles Times sportswriter Owen Bird reported the USC athletes "fought on like the Trojans of antiquity", and the president of the university at the time, George F. Bovard, approved the name officially.

The university is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". According to the National Science Foundation, USC spent $891 million on research and development in 2018, ranking it 23rd in the nation. USC employs approximately 4,706 full-time faculty, 1,816 part-time faculty, 16,614 staff members, and 4,817 student workers. 350 postdoctoral fellows are supported along with over 800 medical residents. Among the USC faculty, 17 are members of the National Academy of Sciences, 16 are members of the National Academy of Medicine, 37 are members of the National Academy of Engineering, 97 are members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and 34 are members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 5 to the American Philosophical Society, and 14 to the National Academy of Public Administration. 29 USC faculty are listed as among the "Highly Cited" in the Institute for Scientific Information database. George Olah won the 1994 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and was the founding director of the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute. Leonard Adleman won the Turing Award in 2003. Arieh Warshel won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

The university also supports the Pacific Council on International Policy through joint programming, leadership collaboration, and facilitated connections among students, faculty, and Pacific Council members. The university has two National Science Foundation–funded Engineering Research Centers: the Integrated Media Systems Center and the Center for Biomimetic Microelectronic Systems. The Department of Homeland Security selected USC as its first Homeland Security Center of Excellence. Since 1991, USC has been the headquarters of the NSF and USGS funded Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC). The University of Southern California is a founding and charter member of CENIC, the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California, the nonprofit organization, which provides extremely high-performance Internet-based networking to California's K-20 research and education community. USC researcher Jonathan Postel was an editor of communications-protocol for the fledgling internet, also known as ARPANET, for which USC was one of the earliest nodes.

In July 2016, USC became home to the world's most powerful quantum computer, housed in a super-cooled, magnetically shielded facility at the USC Information Sciences Institute, the only other commercially available quantum computing system operated jointly by NASA and Google. Notable USC faculty include or have included the following: Leonard Adleman, Richard Bellman, Aimee Bender, Barry Boehm, Warren Bennis, Todd Boyd, T.C. Boyle, Leo Buscaglia, Drew Casper, Manuel Castells, Erwin Chemerinsky, George V. Chilingar, Thomas Crow, António Damásio, Francis De Erdely, Percival Everett, Murray Gell-Mann, Seymour Ginsburg, G. Thomas Goodnight, Jane Goodall, Solomon Golomb, Midori Goto, Susan Estrich, Janet Fitch, Tomlinson Holman, Jascha Heifetz, Henry Jenkins, Thomas H. Jordan, Mark Kac, Pierre Koenig, Neil Leach, Leonard Maltin, Daniel L. McFadden, Viet Thanh Nguyen, George Olah, Scott Page, Tim Page (music critic), Simon Ramo, Claudia Rankine, Irving Reed, Jacob Soll, Michael Waterman, Frank Gehry, Arieh Warshel, Lloyd Welch, Jonathan Taplin, Diane Winston, and Gabriel Zada.

In February 2023, USC Graduate Student Workers voted 93% to unionize with the United Auto Workers, becoming the first academic worker union at a private university in Los Angeles. Workers voted to form a union by a vote of 1,599–122. The union campaign of over 3,000 research assistants, teaching assistants, and assistant lecturers garnered support from numerous California elected officials, including United States senator Alex Padilla and Los Angeles City Councilman Hugo Soto-Martinez.

Controversies

Title IX violations

In the mid-2010s, USC was embroiled in numerous controversies and scandals. On May 1, 2014, USC was named as one of many higher-education institutions under investigation by the Office of Civil Rights for potential Title IX violations by Barack Obama's White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault. USC is also under a concurrent Title IX investigation for potential anti-male bias in disciplinary proceedings, as well as denial of counseling resources to male students. In 2018, USC was ordered to pay $111,965 in legal fees to a male student accused of rape after the Title IX investigation run by Gretchen Means Gaspari was deemed unfair. In 2020, USC was penalized for its faulty Title IX processes by the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights.

George Tyndall

The following year, the Los Angeles Times broke another story about USC focusing on George Tyndall, a gynecologist accused of abusing 52 patients at USC. The reports span from 1990 to 2016, and include using racist and sexual language, conducting exams without gloves, and taking pictures of his patients' genitals. Inside Higher Ed later reported that the university's president, C. L. Max Nikias, was resigning, noting that "other incidents in which the university is perceived to have failed to act on misconduct by powerful officials" had occurred. Tyndall was fired in 2017 after reaching a settlement with the university. By June 1, 2018, 401 people had contacted a special hotline to receive complaints about the doctor. On October 18, nearly 100 women were reported to have filed new lawsuits against the university, bringing the number of accusations up to over 500 current and former students. A series of settlements to the victims totalled to over $1.1 billion, the largest sexual abuse settlement of any university.

Keck School of Medicine

In 2016, Carmen Puliafito resigned as dean of the Keck School of Medicine. In 2017, the Los Angeles Times revealed that Puliafito had engaged in parties with young recreational drug users and prostitutes, including at the Keck School's offices, with harm to at least one user. His resignation had occurred shortly after a police investigation of those activities. In 2018, Dennis Kelly resigned as men's health physician at USC after almost twenty years. The following year, he was accused by six male graduate students of inappropriate conduct. By 2020, 49 accusations of misconduct had been made against Kelly, all by gay or bisexual students and former students.

Implication in Varsity Blues scandal

USC was one of several universities involved in the 2019 college admissions bribery scandal. On March 12, 2019, three coaches and one athletic director were charged with accepting bribes from wealthy families for fraudulently facilitating their children's admission to USC. Among the twelve university personnel charged for their involvement in the scandal nationwide, four were associated with USC. Following its involvement in the admissions scandal, the university was derided by its old nickname: the "University of Spoiled Children", a nickname it had previously worked hard to shed.

Preferential treatment of Qatari royal

A 2020 investigative report by the Los Angeles Times revealed that USC granted a bachelor's and master's degree to Khalifa bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, a Qatari royal, while allowing him to avoid rules and procedures that apply to other students. He was accepted to USC as a transfer student from Los Angeles Mission College after his mother, Moza bint Nasser, met USC president Max Nikias in 2012 in Los Angeles, California, at the behest of USC trustee Tom Barrack. An adjunct professor said that Al Thani's handlers delivered a final paper in a bag that also contained a Rolex watch, which the adjunct returned.

Rankings data

In December 2022, three former students in an online graduate program offered by the Rossier School of Education and administered by educational technology company 2U filed a class action lawsuit for the school's filing faulty data with U.S. News & World Report in an effort to boost rankings. Rossier removed itself from the rankings in early 2022.