Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T20:06:23.816Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Gamble on Youth: Robert M. Hutchins, the University of Chicago and the Politics of Presidential Selection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Benjamin McArthur
Benjamin McArthur*
Affiliation:
Southern College of Seventh Day Adventists
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

As bastions of tradition and instigators of change, universities periodically confront the tension embedded in those two antagonistic roles. The latent conflict between tradition and change often becomes manifest when new leadership is chosen. Presidential selection can be an occasion for defining the purposes of an institution; consequently, struggles over these appointments take on prophetic significance. The appointment of Robert Maynard Hutchins as the fifth president of the University of Chicago in 1929 was such an occasion. During his twenty-two-year tenure at Chicago Hutchins became a leading voice of educational reform and made his college the focus of national interest. The legacy of the Hutchins years is much disputed, but that is another story. This article will instead describe how a thirty-year-old easterner came to a prominent leadership post in the Midwest.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , Summer 1990 , pp. 161 - 186
Copyright
Copyright © 1990 by the History of Education Society 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Goodspeed, Thomas Wakefield A History of the University of Chicago: The Firs Quarter Century (Chicago, 1916), 132, 158–59. See also McArthur, Benjamin “Taking a Chance on Youth,” University of Chicago Magazine (Fall 1989).Google Scholar

2 Geiger, Roger L. To Advance Knowledge: The Growth of American Research Universities, 1900–1940 (New York, 1986), 115–22; Karl, Barry D. Charles E. Merriam and the Study of Politics (Chicago, 1974), 150.Google Scholar

3 Fass, Paula S. The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s (New York, 1977), 163, 173; Levine, David O. The American College and the Culture of Aspiration, 1915–1940 (Ithaca, 1986), ch. 6.Google Scholar

4 Block, Jean F. The Uses of Gothic: Planning and Building the Campus of the University of Chicago, 1892–1932 (Chicago, 1983), 126–32; Geiger, To Advance Knowledge, 122–25.Google Scholar

5 Boucher, Chauncey S. The Chicago College Plan (Chicago, 1935), 1–2; Fass, Damned and Beautiful, 209; Block, Uses of Gothic, 162–63.Google Scholar

6 Karl, Barry D. Charles E. Merriam and the Study of Politics (Chicago, 1974), 158.Google Scholar

7 Ibid., 156–57; Jones, Dorothy V. Harold Swift and the Higher Learning (Chicago, 1985), 25–26.Google Scholar

8 Kerr, Clark The Uses of the University (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), 29–41; Palmer, Archie “Newly Elected College Presidents,” School and Society 30 (21 Dec. 1929): 852–56; Flexner, Abraham “The College President,” Association of American Colleges Bulletin 26 (Dec. 1940): 587–90; Schmidt, George P. The Old Time College President (New York, 1930); Veysey, Laurence R. The Emergence of the American University (Chicago, 1965).Google Scholar

9 Dodd, William E. to Becker, Carl 15 May 1928, box 29, Dodd, William E. Papers, Library of Congress.Google Scholar

10 Dodd, to Roper, Daniel C. 11 July 1928, box 31, Dodd Papers.Google Scholar

11 Diary, Dodd 8 May 1928, box 60, ibid. The other faculty members were Laing, Gordon Gale, Henry and Merriam, Charles.Google Scholar

12 List of candidates, President's Committee, 2 and 23 July 1928, folder 2, box 31, Harold, H. Swift Papers, University of Chicago Special Collections; Swift to Raymond Fosdick, B. 9 Jan. 1932, folder 4, box 37, ibid.Google Scholar

13 Diary, Dodd 21, 25, and 28 May 1928, box 60.Google Scholar

14 On Harold Swift, see Jones, Harold Swift and the Higher Learning; Dodd to Charles Merriam, 3 July 1928, box 31, Dodd Papers.Google Scholar

15 Chauncey Boucher to Dodd, 9 May 1928, box 31, Papers, Dodd Boucher sent an almost identical recommendation to Harold Swift, 9 May 1928, box 39, Swift Papers.Google Scholar

16 Diary, Dodd 27 July 1928, box 60; Dodd to Charles Merriam, 27 July 1928, box 31, Dodd Papers.Google Scholar

17 Diary, Dodd 10 May 1928, box 60.Google Scholar

18 Merriam, to Dodd, 5 July 1928, box 31, Dodd Papers.Google Scholar

19 Swift, Harold memo, 29 June 1928, box 37, Swift Papers.Google Scholar

20 Karl, Merriam, 160.Google Scholar

21 “Swift Reveals Why Hutchins Heads, U. of C.,” Chicago Daily News, 26 June 1929, in Biographical Materials, Robert, M. Hutchins Papers, University of Chicago Special Collections. Ashmore, Harry S. gives a concise overview of Hutchins's selection in his recent biography, Unseasonable Truths: The Life of Robert Maynard Hutchins (Boston, 1989), ch. 6.Google Scholar

22 Swift, Harold to Gilkey, Charles 28 Dec. 1928, box 1, Charles Gilkey Papers, University of Chicago Special Collections.Google Scholar

23 Gilkey, Charles Memoranda of Conversations, 29 and 30 Dec. 1929, box 1, ibid.Google Scholar

24 Chicago Tribune, 19 May 1929, clipping in Hutchins Biographical Materials.Google Scholar

25 The best descriptions of Hutchins's Yale law career come from his own autobiographical accounts: “Slightly Autobiographical—Robert M. Hutchins—A Profile,” Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions tape no. 139; and “Center Conversations: Clifton Fadiman Talks with Robert M. Hutchins” Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions tape no. 683.Google Scholar

26 Blair, James Grant “Youth at the Top,“ World's Work 59 (Feb. 1930): 51–53; Hutchins, Robert M. “The Yale Law School in 1928,” typescript, box 3, Hutchins Papers; Schlegel, John Henry “American Legal Realism and Empirical Social Science: From the Yale Experience,” Buffalo Law Review 28 (Summer 1979): 482–90; see also Kalman, Laura Legal Realism at Yale, 1927–1960 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1986).Google Scholar

27 Gilkey, Charles Memoranda of Conversations in Cambridge, 17 Jan. 1929, box 1, Gilkey Papers.Google Scholar

28 Gilkey, Charles Memoranda of Conversations, 29 and 30 Dec. 1928, ibid.Google Scholar

29 Gilkey, Memoranda of Conversations, 30 Dec. 1928, and 20 Jan. 1929, ibid.Google Scholar

30 Gilkey, to Swift, 18 Jan. 1929, ibid.Google Scholar

31 Ibid.Google Scholar

32 Swift, memo, 18 Mar. 1929, box 37, Swift Papers.Google Scholar

33 Nash, J. V. to Gilkey, [spring 1928], box 1, Gilkey Papers.Google Scholar

34 Newspaper clippings, 21 Mar. 1929, box 38, Swift Collection.Google Scholar

35 Swift to Donelley, T. E. 28 Mar. 1929, box 38, Swift Papers.Google Scholar

36 Gunther, John “Swift Reveals Why Hutchins Heads U. of C.“ Chicago Daily News, 26 June 1929, Hutchins Biographical File, Hutchins Papers.Google Scholar

37 Embree, Edwin R. to Swift, 16 Mar. 1929, box 38, Swift Papers.Google Scholar

38 Ibid.Google Scholar

39 Ibid.Google Scholar

40 Hutchins, Robert to Hutchins, William J. [Apr. 1929], box 17, Hutchins, William J. Papers, Berea College.Google Scholar

41 Harold Swift to Donnelly, Thomas E. 9 Apr. 1929, box 38, Swift Papers.Google Scholar

42 Quantrell, Ernest E. to Swift, 12 Apr. 1929, box 31, ibid.Google Scholar

43 Angell to Swift, 16 Apr. 1929, box 38, ibid.Google Scholar

44 Peckham, Howard H. The Making of the University of Michigan, 1817–1967 (Ann Arbor, 1967), 157–68.Google Scholar

45 Fosdick, Raymond B. to Gilkey, Charles 11 Apr. 1929, box 1, Gilkey Papers.Google Scholar

46 Hutchins, Robert M. to Hutchins, William J. 18 Apr. 1929, box 17, Hutchins, William J. Papers.Google Scholar

47 Gunther, “Swift Reveals Why Hutchins Heads U. of C.“Google Scholar

48 Quantrell to Swift, 27 Apr. 1929, box 48, Swift Papers. Years later Hutchins would say that Angell and he never got along, although he did not state the reasons why.Google Scholar

49 Swift memo, 22 Apr. 1929, box 39, Swift Papers.Google Scholar

50 Hutchins, Robert M. to Hutchins, William J. Apr. 1929, box 17, Hutchins, William J. Papers; Swift memo, 22 Apr. 1929, box 38, Swift Papers. After his reassurances about Hutchins's religious sensibility, Gilkey was very disappointed when Hutchins soon disappeared from Sunday morning services at Rockefeller Chapel.Google Scholar

51 Swift memo of report by Quantrell of visit with Angell, 16 Apr. 1929, box 39, Swift Papers.Google Scholar

52 Karl, Merriam, 161.Google Scholar

53 Gunther, “Swift Reveals Why Hutchins Heads U. of C.“Google Scholar

54 “The ‘Boy Dean of New Haven’ Takes Greeley's Advice and Goes West,” newspaper clipping, Hutchins, William J. Papers; Harry Ashmore thoroughly covers Hutchins's thwarted ambitions for the Supreme Court.Google Scholar

55 Adler, Mortimer to Hutchins, Robert M. 27 May 1929, box 4, Hutchins Papers.Google Scholar

56 Hutchins, Robert M. to Hutchins, William J. [April], 1929, box 8, Hutchins, William J. Papers; Hutchins, Robert M. “Slightly Autobiographical.”Google Scholar

57 Hutchins, Robert M. to Hutchins, William J. 3 June 1929, box 17, Hutchins, William J. Papers.Google Scholar

58 Grey, Lennox B. “A President Is Installed,“ University of Chicago Magazine 22 (Dec. 1929):69–75.Google Scholar

59 Hutchins, Robert M. “Inaugural Address,“ University of Chicago Magazine 22 (Dec. 1929):77–81.Google Scholar

60 Wecter, Dixon “Can Metaphyics Save the World?“ Saturday Review of Literature, 10 Apr. 1948, 7.Google Scholar

61 Hamilton, Walton Hale to Dodd, 30 Aug. 1929, box 23, Dodd Papers.Google Scholar