Ezra Cornell's vision of a non-church-affiliated university has persisted to this day, but not without conflict.

In the mid to late 1870s, according to historian Morris Bishop, "Scientists were converted one by one to the evolutionary doctrine and fell in behind the banners of [Charles] Darwin." Large crowds attended talks by faculty preaching the Darwinian gospel, and "the forces of orthodoxy rallied" against the threat to religious narrative.

Word got around. "Cornell, the godless university, was the main target of the denominational attacks," Bishop wrote. "In pulpits across the country over Cornell was denounced and threatened with God's wrath in the next world and boycotting in this." In October 1878, wiseacre students formed the Young Men's Infidel Association; at one meeting, God was declared out of order. (The motion was defeated on the ground that God was not a member.)

Ultimately, Cornell Vice President William C. Russel, who "was certainly not irreligious," lost his administrative post and his professorship in French and history in 1881: He was tainted by his rationalism, liberalism and criticism of his leadership. Students protested. The faculty was torn. But Russel, 67 and penniless, was gone.

-- Adapted by George Lowery from Morris Bishop's "A History of Cornell."