Calvin H. Plimpton, 88; Amherst head opened door to first women there
Calvin H. Plimpton, 88, a former Amherst College president credited with starting the process that led to the admission of women to the prestigious liberal arts school in Massachusetts, died Tuesday at his home in Westwood, Mass., of complications after surgery following a fall, a college spokesman said.
Plimpton, a physician, was Amherst’s president from 1960 to 1971. In January 1970, he appointed a long-range planning commission as a response to a student-approved resolution calling for the admission of women.
The panel’s recommendations to go coeducational were approved in 1974, and the school admitted women for the first time in 1975, spokesman Paul Statt said.
“If you’re crazy enough to be a college president, the 1960s was the time to be it,” Plimpton told the American College of Physicians Observer in 1985. “I was personally responsible for the bombing of children in Birmingham, for napalm, Agent Orange, Vietnam, Cambodia, and finally, I was responsible for the Kent State murders. That’s a lot of sins to have on you.”
The Boston native was a 1939 graduate of Amherst College and attended Harvard Medical School.
He later served as chief of staff at American University Hospital in Beirut from 1984 to 1987 during Lebanon’s civil war.
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