Asa Mahan (1800-1889) was born in Vernon, New York. He studied at Andover Theological Seminary and became a pastor at churches in New York and Ohio. For 15 years, beginning in 1835, he served as president of Oberlin College. Here he established that degrees would be granted to women and minorities under the same conditions and terms as men, a radical directive for that time. In 1871 he retired to England where he preached and wrote until his death. He was a staunch abolitionist and an advocate for women, expressing in his books and sermons that to deny the rights of equality was to deny a central tenet of Christianity.
