Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus in the Eastmoreland neighborhood, Tudor-Gothic style architecture,[5] and a forested canyon nature preserve at its center.

[9] Simeon was an entrepreneur involved in several enterprises, including trade on the Willamette and Columbia Rivers with his close friend and associate, former Portland Mayor William S. Ladd.

[15] Reed was founded explicitly as a reaction against the "prevailing model of East Coast, Ivy League education", its lack of varsity athletics, fraternities, and exclusive social clubs – as well as its coeducational, nonsectarian, and egalitarian status – intended to foster an intensely academic and intellectual college.

[19] According to sociologist Burton Clark, Reed is one of the most unusual institutions of higher learning in the United States,[15] featuring a traditional liberal arts and natural sciences curriculum.

[21] Reed also requires all students to complete a thesis (a two-semester-long research project conducted under the guidance of professors) during the senior year as a prerequisite of graduation.

[27] Reed has no fraternities or sororities and few NCAA sports teams[28] although physical education classes (which range from kayaking to juggling to capoeira) are required for graduation.

[34] Reed President Richard Scholz in 1922 called the educational program as a whole "an honest effort to disregard old historic rivalries and hostilities between the sciences and the arts, between professional and cultural subjects, and, ... the formal chronological cleavage between the graduate and the undergraduate attitude of mind".

According to Reed's Office of Admissions the school's refusal to participate is based in 1994 disclosures by The Wall Street Journal about institutions flagrantly manipulating data in order to move up in the rankings in U.S. News and other popular college guides.

[8] Reed's debating team was awarded the first place sweepstakes trophy for Division II schools at the final tournament of the Northwest Forensics Conference in February 2004.

[83] College President Colin Diver said "I don't honestly know" whether the drug death was an isolated incident or part of a larger problem.

Law enforcement authorities promised to take action, including sending undercover agents to Reed's annual Renn Fayre celebration.

[87][88] In February 2012, the Reed administration chose to call the police following the discovery of "two to three pounds of marijuana and a small amount of ecstasy and LSD in the on-campus apartment of two juniors.

[19] During the McCarthy era of the 1950s, then-President Duncan Ballantine fired Marxist philosopher Stanley Moore, a tenured professor, for his failure to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) investigation.

Elsewhere in the academic world both tenured and nontenured professors with alleged or admitted communist party ties were fired with relatively little fuss or protest.

One element of the class deemed racist by the protestors was the use of the 1978 Steve Martin song "King Tut" in a discussion about cultural appropriation.

In January 2018, Humanities 110 Chair professor Libby Drumm announced in a campus-wide email that the course curriculum would be restructured after years of faculty discussion and in response to student feedback as well as input from an external review committee composed of humanities faculty from other institutes, adopting a "four-module structure" that would include texts from the Americas and allow greater flexibility in the curriculum which would be integrated beginning fall 2018.

In contrast, the science section of campus, including the physics, biology, and psychology (originally chemistry) buildings, were designed in the Modernist style.

Reed announced on July 13, 2007, that it had purchased the Rivelli farm, a 1.5-acre (0.61 ha) tract of land south of the Garden House and west of Botsford Drive.

There are also theme residence halls including everything from substance-free living to Japanese culture to music to a dorm for students interested in outdoors activities (hiking, climbing, bicycling, kayaking, skiing, etc.).

[104] In Spring 2007, the college broke ground on the construction of a new quadrangle called the Grove, with four new Leed certified residence halls (Aspen, Sequoia, Sitka, Bidwell).

[105][110] The new building is also designed to meet "LEED Platinum standards", and Reed is currently evaluating proposals to put solar panels on the roof.

[106] Reed's Cooley Gallery is an internationally recognized contemporary art space located at the entrance to the Eric V. Hauser Memorial Library.

[114] The Cooley Gallery has exhibited international artists such as Mona Hatoum, Al Held, David Reed and Gregory Crewdson as well as the contemporary art collection of Michael Ovitz.

[117] The Reed College Co-ops are a theme community that reside in the Farm and Garden Houses, after many years on the first floor of MacNaughton Hall.

[123] Over the years, institutional memory of this fact has faded and the color appearing on the school's publications and merchandise has darkened to a shade of maroon.

The most common examples of "Richmond Rose" are the satin tapes securing the degree certificate inside a Reed College diploma.

Reed's founding president William T. Foster's outspoken opposition against the entrance of the United States into World War I, as well as the college's support for feminism, its adherence to academic freedom (i.e., inviting a leader of the Socialist Party of America to speak on campus about the Russian Revolution’s potential effect on militarism, emancipation of women, and ending the persecution of Jews), and its nonsectarian status made the college a natural target for what was originally meant to be a pejorative slur.

More structured classes (such as martial arts seminars and mini-classes on obscure academic topics), tournaments, and film festivals round out the schedule, which is different every year.

[146] Notable Reed alumni include Tektronix co-founder Howard Vollum (1936), businessman John Sperling (1948), linguistic anthropologist Dell Hymes (1950), Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gary Snyder (1951), fantasy author David Eddings (1954), distance learning pioneer John Bear (1959), socialist and feminist activist and author Barbara Ehrenreich (1963), radio personality Dr. Demento (1963), programmer, software publisher, author, and philanthropist Peter Norton (1965), former U.S. Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig (1965), alpinist and biophysical chemist Arlene Blum (1966), chemist Mary Jo Ondrechen (1974), computer engineer Daniel Kottke (1976), and Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger (1991).

Among those who attended but did not graduate from Reed are Academy Award-nominated actress Hope Lange, chef James Beard, horse rancher and conspiracy theorist Christopher Langan, and Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs.