Edwin Boone Craighead was born on March 03, 1861 at Callaway County, Missouri, United States. His parents Oliver and Frances (Payne) Craighead were of Scotch-Irish ancestry. They had migrated from Virginia and the father was a prosperous farmer.
Edwin was given a good education and graduated from Central College, Missouri, in 1883. He then went to Vanderbilt for a year to continue his study of Greek, Latin, and English literature. His enthusiasm for his studies led him to Leipzig, but the methods of research there soon repelled him and he went to Paris and took up the study of French literature.
Before going to Europe Craighead had been for a time a teacher in Neosha Collegiate Institute, and upon his return to America he began again to teach. In 1890 he became professor of Greek at Wofford College. His broad culture, his grasp of educational and other public affairs, and his powers as a speaker and writer attracted so much attention that in 1893, at the age of thirty-two, he was elected president of the South Carolina Agricultural and Mechanical College at Clemson. At this institution he began a new policy insisting upon higher standards of preparation and attainment than were usual in the South of that day.
In 1897 he became president of Central College, his alma mater, and four years later he was elected president of the Missouri State Normal School at Warrensburg. Here he organized the program more in accordance with college curricula and under his administration attendance greatly increased.
In 1904 he was elected president of Tulane University, where his first work was to reorganize the medical school, doing away with part-time instructors, raising the standards of admission, and encouraging the study of tropical medicine, which Tulane has continued to make its special field.
In 1912 he was elected president of the State University of Montana, an institution with an enrolment of 230 students. Three years later its registration had increased to about 850 students. He sought to bring to the University men of reputation as scholars, added a school of forestry and a school of journalism, started a premedical course, and formed a plan to consolidate the four small state institutions of higher education into one university. This project was defeated, but his campaign led to the “unification” of the institutions of higher education, under a plan providing for the continuance of their physical separation but allowing a centralized administration under one executive known as the chancellor. Opposition to his policies led to his dismissal, in 1915, in spite of the protests of alumni and students.
He was then elected commissioner of education for North Dakota, to act as expert adviser for the board of regents in reconstructing the system of higher education for the state. The Non-Partisan Movement put an end to this plan of reorganization and he returned to Missoula, where he had established a newspaper.
The remainder of his life was given to spreading his ideas through this paper, the New Northwest. He opposed the influence in politics and education of big business and particularly of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company. His other important service was as trustee (1904 - 15) of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Craighead advocated vigorously academic freedom in teaching.
Edwin was a man of courage and stubbornness. He possessed a gentleness and charm that won him great popularity with students and alumni. He was original in planning educational policies and shrewd in carrying them out. Tolerant of opposing opinions, he was uncompromising in his own, and even when failure was inevitable he would not yield. He gave vitality and broader ideals to the institutions he served.
Craighead married Kate Johnson in 1889.
