20th century
During the early 20th century, Penn worked to attract students from around the globe. In 1910, Penn's first director of publicity created a recruiting brochure translated into Spanish, with approximately 10,000 copies circulated throughout Latin America. That same year, the Penn-affiliated Cosmopolitan Club began an annual "smoker" that drew students from 40 nations.
In 1911, because Philadelphia's segregation-era housing regulations made it difficult to house international students, the Christian Association at the University of Pennsylvania hired its first Foreign Mission Secretary, Reverend Alpheus Waldo Stevenson. The Christian Association purchased 3905 Spruce Street adjacent to campus, which officially opened on January 1, 1918, as the International Students' House. By 1921, Penn's enrollment had grown to 12,000 students, including 253 from at least fifty foreign countries and territories. Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander, who earned a degree at Penn's School of Education in 1918 and a master's in economics in 1919, was awarded the Francis Sergeant Pepper fellowship and in 1921 became the first African-American woman in the United States to earn a PhD from an American university. She was also the first African-American woman admitted to and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Law School (1927), and the first to serve as an editor of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review.
Until 1930, Penn's chief academic and business officer was its Provost. In 1930, Penn's Board combined the two positions, creating the office of President, and elected Thomas Sovereign Gates, a Philadelphia banker who had served as a director of the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Baldwin Locomotive Company, and as chairman of Penn's endowment fund. From 1930 to 1966, there were 54 documented Rowbottom riots, a student tradition that included car smashing and panty raids. After 1966, five additional Rowbottoms occurred, the last in 1980. By 1931, first-year students were required to live in the quadrangle unless they received permission to live with family. Even so, the undergraduate schools continued to have a large commuting population well into the post-World War II period; as late as the 1940s, two-thirds of Penn's women students were commuters.George William McClelland, who received his bachelor's, master's and PhD all from Penn, served from 1944 to 1948 as Penn's second president. During his tenure, the ENIAC, the world's first all-electronic digital computer, was completed at Penn in 1946. Former Minnesota governor and perennial presidential candidate Harold Stassen served as Penn's third president from 1948 to 1953. The trustees chose Stassen in part for his reputation as a fundraiser, as Penn was in a financial crisis. Stassen helped raise funds, cut costs, focused resources on selected departments, continued McClelland's campus expansion, and reformed intercollegiate athletics to conform to the new Ivy League. He contested the NCAA's prohibition on televising football games by entering a $200,000 contract with ABC, but backed down after the NCAA threatened to expel Penn.
After World War II, a surge of students enrolling under the G.I. Bill prompted the university to launch a capital spending program to overhaul its campus, including student housing. By 1961, 79 percent of male undergraduates and 57 percent of female undergraduates lived on campus. In 1965, Penn students learned that the university was sponsoring research projects for the United States' chemical and biological weapons program. Students petitioned Penn's fourth president, Gaylord Harnwell (1954–1971), to halt the program, calling it incompatible with an academic institution. Faculty voted on November 4, 1965, to re-examine the university agency responsible for the project. The first openly LGBTQ+ organization funded by Penn was formed in 1972 by Kiyoshi Kuromiya, a Benjamin Franklin Scholar and Penn alumnus (College Class of 1966), who created the Gay Coffee Hour. The group met weekly on campus, was open to non-students, and served as an alternative to gay bars for gay people of all ages.
Vartan Gregorian, who joined the Penn faculty in 1972 and served as the 23rd provost from January 1979 to October 1980, was widely considered the likely successor to become Penn's sixth president. The trustees instead chose Sheldon Hackney, who served as president from 1981 through 1993.
In 1983, members of the Animal Liberation Front broke into the Head Injury Clinical Research Laboratory at the School of Medicine and stole research tapes. The footage was edited by PETA into the film Unnecessary Fuss, and after media coverage and pressure from animal-rights activists, the project was shut down. Penn drew national attention in 1993 for the water buffalo incident, in which a student who told a group of mostly Black female students to "shut up, you water buffalo" was charged with violating the university's racial harassment policy.
Dr. Claire M. Fagin served as interim president from July 1, 1993, to June 30, 1994, becoming one of the first women to serve as president of an Ivy League university. Judith Rodin, who served from 1994 to 2004, was the first permanent female president of an Ivy League university. During her presidency, Penn's fundraising and endowment grew, the university launched a community renewal program, and admissions selectivity increased. Rodin's administration encouraged revitalization in University City and West Philadelphia through public safety initiatives, Wharton School alliances for small businesses, the development of buildings and streetscapes oriented toward the surrounding community, and the establishment of a university-led partnership school, the Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander University of Pennsylvania Partnership School.
