University of Rhode Island

University of Rhode Island
City:	Kingston, Rhode Island
Type:	Public
Sports:	baseball, basketball, cross country, field hockey, football, golf, gymnastics, rowing, soccer, softball, swimming, tennis, track and field, volleyball
Colors:	blue, orange
Mascot:	Rhody (Rams)
Endowment:	$97.6 million
Website:	http://www.uri.edu/

The University of Rhode Island (or URI) is a Rhode Island public university chartered as the state's agricultural school in 1888. The school has four campuses, the flagship is located in Kingston, Rhode Island. It was ranked a third tier school in US News's 2008 "National Universities: Tier 3" list.

Erik Loomis, a professor at the University of Rhode Island, on a blog to which he contributes justified murdering right-wing activists as "moral". The professor has a history of threatening comments toward right-wingers, and another contributor to the blog wrote on September 8, 2020 that "American universities are generally hostile to conservative views, because conservative views are generally wrong" and that "a liberal university can’t actually “welcome”...religious fundamentalists into its interpretive community".

History

Rhode Island was a land grant college, meaning Morrill's Land Grant Act (which gave each state thirty thousand acres of public land to be sold, with the profits being directed to a university) funded it (although, initially the profits went to Brown University, and did not shift to URI until 1894). John H. Washburn was the school's first president.