Nason, John W.

John Nason was born on February 9, 1905 in St. Paul, Minnesota. He attended high school at St. Paul High School and then went to Phillips Exeter Academy. He attended Carleton College in 1922 and graduated summa cum laude in 1926, having been elected to Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year. He then spent 1926-27 at Yale Divinity School after receiving a fellowship from the Council on Religion in Higher Education. At the end of the year he was elected a fellow of the Council. From there he went on to Harvard and in 1928 received a Masters degree in Philosophy. That year he was named the Rhodes Scholar from Minnesota and performed his honors work in Philosophy at Oriel College in Oxford University from 1928-31. Nason s first involvement in Swarthmore came upon his return to the United States in 1931 when he became a Philosophy instructor. In 1934 he was promoted to the rank of Assistant Professor and served as head of the department in 1938-39 in the absence of Professor Blanshard. For three years he assisted Dr. Frank Aydelotte in the administration of both the college and of Rhodes Scholarship affairs throughout the country. For 1938-40 he served officially as Assistant to the President of the College. In June of 1940 Nason took over his duties as one of the youngest college presidents in U.S. history. In 1943, in order to prevent the disruption of school, Nason implemented a summer session for both Swarthmore students and nearly 300 Navy men. In the fall of 1943, the Chinese Navy sent forty-nine officers to Swarthmore to study English. By the next year, there were little more than 400 civilian students on campus as well as 250 Navy men. In the fall of 1946, enrollment reached an all-time high of over 1000 students. Issues such as integration were also addressed, and there was a call from the student body to accept more students of color and more Jewish students. In 1952 after twelve years of presidency and twenty-one overall years of teaching at Swarthmore, Nason resigned. After he left Swarthmore he served as President of the Foreign Policy Association and later as President of Carleton College from 1962-1970. He has also been a trustee of the United Negro College Fund, Vassar College, and Phillips Exeter Academy, as well as written a number of publications.

American educator; president, Swarthmore College, 1940-1953; chairman, National Japanese American Student Relocation Council, 1942-1945; president, Carleton College, 1962-1970.