Part of the alumni frustration stemmed from how the decision came about, which seemed to many a repudiation of Antioch’s tradition of weekly “community government” meetings where students, faculty members and administration officials discuss a range of issues. As Richard Daily, class of ’68, a lawyer and alumni board member, said in an interview, “Antioch is one of those institutions where nothing happens by diktat — except its closure.”

Image Steven Lawry, president of Antioch, said in an interview that it had in recent years bred political narrowness and a culture of resentment. Credit... Mark Lyons for The New York Times

True to their training in community organizing, alumni created a breakaway fund to raise money for Antioch College, which university officials are hoping to reinvent and reopen in 2012. Aiming to raise $40 million in two years, the alumni board plans to leverage the money to guarantee them a voice in shaping Antioch’s future, Mr. Daily said.

“The Antioch Emancipation Fund,” as Cary Nelson, class of ’67, president of the American Association of University Professors, described it.

The faculty, too, is threatening legal action to stop the closing.

In its heyday in the 1960s, Antioch was a center of hippie culture on campus, with more than 2,000 students enrolled. “Antioch was always at the head, with the beatniks, the antiwar movement, civil rights,” said Barrie Grenell, who attended in the 1960s. “And now we’re in the forefront of disintegrating colleges.”

In its glory days, it attracted students who wanted to change the world, through war protests or work in communities. But Steven Lawry, Antioch’s president, said in an interview that more recently, the college became a magnet for students who felt marginalized, and so bred a political narrowness and culture of resentment. By way of example, he cited students getting “called out” for wearing Nikes, seen as an emblem of globalization.

“It became less about intellectual rigor, than a political and social experience,” he said. “The boot camp of the revolution became the model.”

“We were offering,” he added, “a political re-education” instead of a liberal education.

And that model, he added, is sharply at odds with what most students are looking for these days. He said there had also been huge failures in management going back decades, like not seeking bequests from alumni. But he added that the college had also deteriorated and lacked clarity about its strengths. And it lacked its own board of trustees, instead reporting to a board that covers the college and five satellite campuses in four states for graduate and continuing education students.