Occidental's current 120-acre (49 ha) campus is located in Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, and was designed by architect Myron Hunt.

Occidental is a founding member of the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference and its 20 varsity sports teams compete in NCAA Division III.

[4][5] Occidental College was founded on April 20, 1887, by a group of Presbyterian clergy, missionaries, and laymen, including James George Bell, Lyman Stewart, and Thomas Bard.

[6][10] The small size of the 15-acre (6.1 ha) campus and the disruption caused by frequent freight trains pushed the college's trustees to find a new location.

[11][12][13] Two weeks after Booker T. Washington came to visit Occidental, on March 27, 1914, Swan, Fowler, and Johnson Halls were dedicated at its new Eagle Rock campus.

[7] English novelist Aldous Huxley, who had spoken at Occidental's convocation ceremony in the then-new Thorne Hall in 1938, lampooned President Remsen Bird as Dr. Herbert Mulge of Tarzana College in his 1939 novel, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan.

[19] Paden and Segal were among the ten Occidental students who participated in Crossroads Africa that year, a forerunner to the Peace Corps that later became a national program.

One year later, faculty voted to suspend classes in the wake of the Kent State shootings and America's invasion of Cambodia.

Subsequently, Oxy students wrote 7,000 letters to Washington D.C., protesting U.S. involvement in the war in Southeast Asia.

[21] Occidental launched one of the country's first Upward Bound programs in 1966, aimed at increasing the number of low-income, underrepresented high school students who become the first in their family to go to college.

"[30] In response to student and faculty outcry the college adopted a new interim sexual misconduct policy, hired a former assistant district attorney as a full-time, independent Title IX coordinator, and added a new 24-hour, 7-days-a-week telephone hotline.

The school also created a permanent Sexual Misconduct Advisory Board made up of students, faculty, and staff.

In 2015, "birthers" falsely claimed that Obama's Occidental College transcript revealed he received financial aid as a foreign student from Indonesia after the resurgence of a fake news story from 2009.

[35] In July 2020, Harry J. Elam, Jr., formerly vice provost for undergraduate education and Drama professor at Stanford University, became Occidental's 16th president.

[37] On March 26, 2024, it was announced that Tom Stritikus, late of Fort Lewis College, will become Occidental's president effective July 1.

[45] There are more than 40 majors offered on campus (and nine minor-only programs, including Public Health, Linguistics, and Classical Studies)[47] and a 9:1 student–faculty ratio.

"[55] The 2017 edition of the Fiske Guide to Colleges gave Occidental four-star ratings (out of five) in academics and quality of life.

Princeton Review's The Best 381 Colleges 2017 Edition gave Occidental ratings of 91 (out of 100) in academics and quality of life and 95 in financial aid.

[65] In 2023, it was announced by President Harry Elam that Occidental eliminated legacy preferences to the children of alumni in admissions.

In 2014, diver Jessica Robson set the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference records for both 1m and 3m diving.

[75] Since then, Oxy has produced more than a dozen Olympians, world-record holders, and national champions, including 1935 national girls' tennis champion Pat Henry Yeomans '38, two-time diving gold medalist Sammy Lee '43, and pole vault silver medalist Bob Gutowski '57.

Notable graduates of Occidental College include filmmaker Terry Gilliam, football player and politician Jack Kemp, pioneering African-American physicist and inventor George Edward Alcorn Jr., former New Orleans Saints and Indianapolis Colts head coach Jim E. Mora, co-inventor of the hard disk drive William Goddard, psychopharmacologist and professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Roland Griffiths, federal judge Jacqueline Nguyen, academic, film executive and novelist August Coppola, historian and chancellor of the California State University system Glenn Dumke, former Lieutenant Governor of California Robert Finch, adventurer and writer Homer Lea, poet Robinson Jeffers, librarian and writer Lawrence Clark Powell, entertainment journalist Sam Rubin, Tony Award-winning actress Joanna Gleason, civil rights activist Ernesto Galarza, television director Jesus Salvador Trevino, voice actress and internet personality Ashly Burch, entertainment executive John Branca, political scientist Eqbal Ahmad, journalist and current dean of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Steve Coll, actor and writer George Nader, veteran executive at Walt Disney Imagineering Joe Rohde, former CEO of Warner Music Group Stephen Cooper, President of Catholic University of America Peter Kilpatrick, Ambassador to Armenia and former chargé d'affaires to Ukraine during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine Kristina Kvien, Dartmouth Professor Steve Swayne, and civil rights activist and initiator of "We Shall Overcome" Guy Carawan.

Ambassador to Finland Derek Shearer, former CNN and Fox News contributor Caroline Heldman, chemist Frank L. Lambert, art historian and author Amy Lyford, and the 2005 PEN American Center Literary Award winner in poetry Martha Ronk.