Leading an institution of higher education through the tumultuous decade of the 1960’s was no small task for any college president.  But beyond the universal problems of managing the campus during an historic era of social change amid war protests and the movements for civil rights and women’s rights, Margaret Claydon, SND, had an additional challenge when she took the helm at Trinity College in Washington, D.C. in 1959:  she had to figure out how to keep a traditional small Catholic women’s college relevant and thriving in a world increasingly favoring large coeducational universities.  During her tenure as Trinity’s president from 1959 to 1975, “Sister Margaret” as she was known to generations of students and alumnae led a series of remarkable changes that modernized the college and laid the foundation for the institution known today as Trinity Washington University.

Only 36 years old when she took office, Sr. Margaret was one of the youngest college presidents in America.  Displaying the modern vibe that characterized so much of her career, she immediately called a press conference to announce her plans for promoting women’s education at Trinity.  As Time magazine reported (“Sisterly Advice,” November 2, 1959), Sr. Margaret declared the need for more women to exert public intellectual leadership, saying that, “We’re not in the business of training committee women or bridge players.”

A 1945 graduate of Trinity with a doctorate in English Literature from Catholic University, Sr. Margaret was legendary for her rigorous insistence on academic excellence along with women’s leadership in the public arena.  Just some of the notable graduates of Trinity during her time as president include Nancy Pelosi who became the first woman ever to be speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives; Kathleen Sebelius who served as governor of Kansas and Secretary of Health and Human Services; and Cathleen Black who rose in publishing to become chairman of Hearst Magazines.

Firm in her commitment to the central importance of the liberal arts, Sr. Margaret led revitalization and modernization of Trinity’s curricula and pedagogy, adding graduate degrees for teachers and pastoral ministers in the Washington region, and opening the undergraduate program to older women seeking to complete degrees.  Her crowning academic achievement was securing a chapter of the prestigious Phi Beta Kappa honor society for Trinity, only the second Catholic women’s college in the country to do so.

The controversies of the 1960’s were never far from Sr. Margaret’s thoughts.  In a 1965 speech “Inheriting a Revolution” she spelled out the whole point of a liberal arts education:  “We have to be willing to acquaint our students with controversy and problematic knowledge.  The emphasis cannot be only on the assemblage and mastery of facts, but must be on how to make sense of them in relation to the whole human condition. We have to encourage our students of today to take stands that may be unpopular, that may even expose them to ostracism, debate, controversy.”  And she went on, in a passage that echoes loudly in 2018, “One of the basic rights of free people is to be informed truthfully about public events.  Our students must be taught from the very beginning that this right is theirs, that they have a duty to seek the facts, the right to investigate truth freely.”

The 1960’s were also a period of dramatic change in the Roman Catholic Church as a result of the Second Vatican Council which fostered changes in liturgy, religious life and the Church’s engagement with the world.  Beyond superficial changes in liturgical language and religious clothing, Vatican II also gave rise to change in the governance of Catholic higher education.

With national stature as the first woman president of the college and university department of the National Catholic Education Association, in 1966 Sr. Margaret gave a bold speech at the NCEA meeting calling for substantial change in the governance of Catholic colleges and universities, saying that Catholic colleges “must have autonomy in academic affairs and decisions,” a major change in structure from religiously-controlled governance.  She went on,  “The only criterion for appointment or election to the Board should be competence in a special area … there should be no stipulation regarding status as religious or laity but simply the securing of the best possible leadership available.”  Putting her words into practice, Sr. Margaret led the transformation of Trinity’s board of trustees from all religious to a majority of lay trustees.

Her national stature led to her election as the only female delegate in a convening of Catholic college presidents at the Vatican in 1972.  Years later she could still remember the barriers she faced as the only woman at that meeting:  “I kept raising my hand and wanting to speak, but they wouldn’t call on me,” she said with a wry laugh that was pointed even decades later.  The men were ignoring her.  She confided her frustration to her friend Father Theodore Hesburgh, president of the University of Notre Dame.  He came up with a plan:  “He made a point of taking me to lunch.  We walked out of the Vatican at the spot where all the men were getting into their big limousines, and he made a point of introducing me to each of them, and then we walked on together and they saw us talking.  After that, they called on me regularly.”

Under Sr. Margaret’s leadership, Trinity experienced dramatic growth in the size of the student body through the 1960’s.  She expanded integration and diversification of the student body, securing a Carnegie Corporation grant in 1965 for scholarships for students from the city, and starting an Upward Bound program.  She was prominent in national educational associations and D.C. organizations, serving on such diverse boards as the Greater Washington Educational Television Association and Washington Opportunities for Women, among many others.

The campus grew along with the student body, and Sr. Margaret led campaigns and building programs for a new library, fine arts building, and a residence hall; plans for many more buildings were drawn.  But the wave of coeducation at formerly all-male universities proved to be a setback for Trinity and all women’s college, and by the early 1970’s enrollment was in a sharp decline.  Believing that the women’s college was still an important form of education, Sr. Margaret continued to push for innovative changes to keep Trinity competitive in the changing landscape of higher education.  After sixteen years in office, she resigned from the presidency in 1975.

After a sabbatical at Yale, Sr. Margaret returned to Trinity as a professor of English where she continued to teach Shakespeare and her beloved poets Hopkins, Yeats and Eliot.  She was especially fond of quoting T.S. Eliot:  “Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future, and time future contained in time past.”