REMINISCENCES OF THE COLUMBIA HISTORY DEPARTMENT
1923-1975
ike other departments of instruction at Columbia, history was divided into a College and a graduate branch. The latter, housed in Kent Hall, was composed of the senior members, who taught only graduate courses. The juniors across the road in Hamilton Hall taught the College boys under the direction of a full professor designated as head. He maintained the liaison with the other half as regards appointments, promotions, and salaries. As for the curriculum, it was decided upon in a way that required him to be an able negotiator. After gauging the abilities of his young team, he proposed—and the graduate branch disposed; except that the interdepartmental Committee on Instruction of the College, led by the dean, had ideas of its own. Not only did it not rubber-stamp everything that came from the departments, it also proposed. The College faculty, which was the entire College teaching staff, had final say.
It was the dean and his committee that organized Contemporary Civilization and they took on the fight with its opponents wherever found. In general, the objection was not to the new course itself, but to assigning as teachers those at the instructor rank. These young men were doctoral candidates who were supposed to be writing their dissertations. Now they would be expected to learn a good deal that was "outside their field" while carrying a heavy schedule: two sections of C.C. and a third course—fourteen hours a week; it would be (and was) grueling. The students benefited from the small sections and from their mentor's freshly acquired knowledge, but the instructor was delayed in his progress toward the degree.
For him, too, the geographical division of the department was unfortunate. It deprived the young scholar of daily contact with his seasoned elders, and these had no chance to guide or judge the work of the juniors. In more than one instance, a senior member, voting on promotions, confused the identities of two juniors until his retirement and beyond. The annual dinner (black tie) of the entire group, friendly enough, did not erase misconceptions.
For the College students, the gap between branches was bridged by the opportunity in their third year to take any first-year graduate course and count it toward the B.A.
In 1922 the survey given in Contemporary Civilization was supplemented by a second required year—C.C. (B)—that explained the nature and the ways of economics, sociology, anthropology, and psychology. As a result, a student who emerged from the two C.C.'s with a passing mark was capable of following with profit a specific course in any of the seven "sciences of man in society."
In history, the course most likely to be chosen first was Carlton Hayes's offering of the year in Modern European History. He varied the span from time to time, which often made it possible to take a second course with him the following year. Everybody knew that he was an enthralling lecturer. As he strode back and forth behind the wide counter of the large lecture room, he conveyed the drama of some decisive moment in the French Revolution or that of Bismarck's triumph when proclaiming Germany an empire. It was not bombast but history felt as well as recalled. Hayes's style had been abundantly sampled in C.C. through the assigned readings from his two-volume Political and Social History of Europe, the leading textbook throughout the country. In 1934 Hayes reworked it into a Political and Cultural History of corresponding scope.
An alternative was to sign up for Parker T. Moon's course on International Relations, also varied in span, but most attractive when it was entitled Imperialism and World Politics and covered the years 1870-1914. The causes of the Great War (as it was then called) were an inexhaustible topic in the profession and not less so among serious students. Moon also lectured out of abundant knowledge and with flamboyance when suitable. A graduate course was given in two lectures a week, followed by a third hour with an assistant for discussion, quizzes, and a term paper. Parker Moon quite often took the third hour himself and was uncommonly kind to the overawed youngsters who asked questions, mispronounced proper names, and did deep "research" in prewar diplomacy. His early death was an irreparable loss to them and the department.
Close to these two luminaries was the coming man, Edward Mead Earle. He also taught European diplomatic history, with a strong economic component. His recent dissertation on the Berlin to Baghdad Railway had been published as a regular trade book, a stunning event in the eyes of mere students and proof of his capacity. Earle's bright prospects were soon dimmed by the onset of tuberculosis. After a long recovery in Saranac, he was appointed the first head of the history section in the new Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton.
A Columbia undergraduate's program in his last two years might show a straightforward concentration or "major," but owing to the C.C. spirit, the requirement was broadly interpreted. Advanced courses in economics, sociology, or anthropology were not alien subjects for a history major. And then there was General Honors. This was the two-year sequence created by John Erskine, of the English Department, on a suggestion by George Edward Woodberry. It was designed to give a selected group of students the chance to read whole books instead of snippets. This innovation was the start of the Great Books movement and the cause of the continuing debate about "the canon" of Western classics.
Since as a collection these great works disregard the academic cutting up of thought into subjects, taking General Honors was really to fulfill the demands of the New Historians for an ecumenical outlook on the past. The reading list for Honors took the student from Homer to William James, the encounters along the way being with Thomas Aquinas, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Voltaire, and J.S. Mill, among others. This "mini-canon" varied according to the preferences of the two instructors of each small group. Every book must be read in one week and well enough to outfit the student with ideas for two hours of conversational discussion.
General Honors was renamed The Colloquium when the mood of the day became hostile to indications of superiority, but the course remained the same in purpose, contents, and method. Out of it came in 1937 the Humanities course, required in the freshman year, and different from Honors only in the layout of the syllabus. It was later supplemented by Oriental Humanities, which introduced one to classics of India, China, and Japan. All this cutting across former subjects of instruction embodied the rediscovery that a culture is an intradependent whole. It cannot be studied all in one piece, but the divisions made for convenience should not leave the student believing that they are intrinsic or permanent. Continued. . .
