Dr. Jim Dixon, Antioch '38, was president of Antioch College from 1959 through 1975 when he was illegally fired by then Antioch Board Chairman Larry Pearl, Antioch '55 (also Yale U. Law School '58....he worked as a lawyer for the US Fed. Govt. under Pres. Ford when Dixon was fired, which is interesting...see Dixon's comments in the book about Pres. Ford) who (Pearl)held an illegal meeting at the Dayton, Ohio airport of Antioch trustees, and in spite of the fact there was not a quorum at that meeting, claimed (wrongly) a majority of the trusees voted to remove Dixon, even though this was not the case.

Dixon refused to protest the decision, accepted the firing by Pearl (probably due to sheer exhaustion at being embattled too long in a brutal job), and left Antioch after 16 years as Antioch president, the longest presidential term any Antioch CEO ever served in a history which began in 1852 (beating out absentee Antioch president Arthur Morgan [1921-1936]).

Dr. James P. Dixon '38 was and is (he is still living as of this writing) both a genius and a comic book New England aristocrat, complete with Mass. Bay Colony descendants and long time credentials in Massachusetts. He rode the bucking bronco that is the Antioch College presidency for almost two decades, and the College made more progress during his presidency than at any other period in its history. What Charles Eliot was to Harvard (Harvard's most important president who served from 1867-1910), James Dixon was and is to Antioch.

In 1978, successor Antioch College president Dr. William Birenbaum (1976-85) reorganized Antioch College and its then 30 additional campuses and independent degree programs scattered all across the USA and abroad into the (then) new Antioch University.

But in fact it was Dixon who was responsisble for the growth of Antioch's influence and educational power which compelled this change. Under Dixon's watch, Antioch went from being a pleasant and respected prestigious though sophomoric and provincial college started in 19th century Ohio... ranked with Kenyon and Oberlin Colleges there, cranking our doctors, lawyers, and other petty bourgeois types requiring a college degree.... to a true University, like Harvard, Oxford, Heidelburg, and Bologna.

When Dixon left Antioch College, it had, in addition to the undergrad college started in 1852, every type grad school but a medical school, a dental school, and a library school.

The lack of a medical school was ironic since Dixon himself was an Antioch grad medical doctor who went on to become a prominent and brilliant health administrator physician. In the 1950's, he led public health programs in both Philadelphia and Denver before coming to Antioch as president in 1959 when he was 38 years old.

After his Antioch president years, he moved to Durham, NC and taught public health at the U. of NC Med. School and also the Walden U. Ph.D. program while also being very active with the N. Carolina ACLU (he had taught grad school in the '50's at the U. of Penn. before coming to the Antioch presidency).

Dixon took more than a decade to compose his memoirs (which is what ANTIOCH: THE DIXON ERA are), and they were finally made public in his book in 1991.

The book is wonderfully indexed, maddenly incomplete in many ways. The incompleteness is totally forgiveable, given the ground he had to cover. No Antioch president since Horace Mann in 1852 EVER prepared a retrospective book about his/her Antioch presidency (are your listening, Joan and Bob?) All should have (that includes you both, Joan and Bob). Only Dixon did. He was perhaps Antioch College's greatest president ever (do Joan and Bob disagree....why? Don't bother to reply...you are both wrong and I'll tell you both why if you DO reply), from Horace Mann in 1852 until the present day.

The book is hard to obtain at this time, not available at Amazon.Com at this time (August 2003), but listed in the Amazon.Com database anyway as "unavailable" because its importance is well known.

The Dixon family distributed the book originally (in the early 1990's) with help of old time friend Roy Fairchild, who set up "Bastille Books" in Saco, Maine.

ANTIOCH: THE DIXON ERA 1959-75 is a "must read" for every Antiochian everywhere. Get it. Read it. Read it again. Get it back in publication. Insist that the Antioch Bookstore carry it forever. Get copies into important libraries everywhere. Get the entire text of the book onto the world wide web permanently, easy to find through Google.Com and other internet search engines. This is all important.

Thank you for reading this.