icholas Murray Butler (April 2, 1862-December 7, 1947) was an educator and university president; an adviser to seven presidents and friend of statesmen in foreign nations; recipient of decorations from fifteen foreign governments and of honorary degrees from thirty-seven colleges and universities; a member of more than fifty learned societies and twenty clubs; the author of a small library of books, pamphlets, reports, and speeches; an international traveler who crossed the Atlantic at least a hundred times; a national leader of the Republican Party; an advocate of peace and the embodiment of the «international mind» that he frequently spoke about. He was called Nicholas Miraculous Butler by his good friend Theodore Roosevelt; the epithet was so perfect that, once uttered, it could not be forgotten.

Born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, this son of Henry L. Butler, a manufacturer, and Mary Murray Butler, daughter of Nicholas Murray, a clergyman and author, began his career with a brilliant record as a student. In 1882, at the age of twenty, he received his bachelor’s degree, in 1883, a master’s degree, in 1884, a doctorate – all from Columbia College; in 1885 he studied in Paris and in Berlin where he began a lifelong friendship with Elihu Root, who was also destined to become a Nobel peace laureate. In the fall of 1885, he accepted an appointment on the staff of the Department of Philosophy at Columbia College, which in 1896 became Columbia University. And so began a professional association that was to last for sixty years.

From the first, Butler distinguished himself as an educational administrator. Within four years he gave administrative form to his philosophical theory of pedagogy by establishing an institute which, later affiliated with Columbia, became known as Teachers College. He founded the Educational Review and edited it for thirty years, wrote reports on state and local educational systems, served as a member of the New Jersey Board of Education from 1887 to 1895, participated in the formation of the College Entrance Examination Board. He was named acting president of Columbia University in 1901 and president in 1902, retaining that position until retirement in October, 1945.

Under his presidency, Columbia University made phenomenal growth. It became a major university. All graduate studies were enormously expanded; the scope of professional training was enlarged to include new schools such as those of journalism and dentistry; the student body was increased from 4,000 to 34,000 and the faculty by a like ratio; the plant was enlarged by a construction program that averaged a new building each year, and the endowment kept pace; the professorial salaries were increased enough to attract many of the world’s leading scholars to the teaching and research staff.

Butler moved in the realm of politics as easily as he did in that of education. He was a delegate to the Republican convention for the first time in 1888 and for the last in 1936. Butler, Root, William Howard Taft, and Theodore Roosevelt constituted a powerful political quartet in the early years of the century. Breaking with the others in 1912, Roosevelt ran for the presidency as the candidate of the Progressive Party, which drew most of its strength from Republicans, against the nominees of the constituted party: Taft for the presidency and Butler for the vice-presidency. By splitting the national vote, they permitted the Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, to win the election. In 1916 Butler failed in his attempt to secure the Republican presidential nomination for Root and in 1920 and 1928 failed to secure it for himself

Meanwhile, Butler sought to unite the world of education and that of politics in a struggle to achieve world peace through international cooperation. He was chairman of the Lake Mohonk Conferences on International Arbitration, which met periodically from 1907 to 1912, and was appointed president of the American branch of International Conciliation, an organization founded by another Nobel peace laureate, d’Estournelles de Constant. His association with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace was a fruitful one of thirty-five years. Influential in persuading Andrew Carnegie to establish the Endowment in 1910 with a gift of $ 10,000,000, he served as head of the Endowment’s section on international education and communication, founded the European branch of the Endowment, with headquarters in Paris, and held the presidency of the parent Endowment from 1925 to 1945.

Butler married twice. His first wife, whom he married in 1887 and by whom he had one daughter, died in 1903; he remarried in 1907. When Butler became almost totally blind in 1945 at the age of eighty-three, he resigned the demanding posts he still held. He died two years later.

In 1940, Butler completed his autobiography with the publication of the second volume of Across the Busy Years. Both in size and in title it is peculiarly appropriate.

Selected Bibliography

Butler, Nicholas Murray. The Butler papers are deposited in the library of Columbia University.

Butler, Nicholas Murray, Across the Busy Years: Recollections and Reflections. 2 vols. New York, Scribner, 1939-1940. Contains a bibliography.

Butler, Nicholas Murray, Between Two Worlds: Interpretations of the Age in Which We Live. New York, ScriEner, 1934.

Butler, Nicholas Murray, Building the American Nation: An Essay of Interpretation. New York, Scribner, 1923.

Butler, Nicholas Murray, The Faith of a Liberal: Essays and Addresses on Political Principles and Public Policies. New York, Scribner, 1924.

Butler, Nicholas Murray, The Family of Nations: Its Need and its Problems. Essays and Addresses. New York, Scribner, 1938.

Butler, Nicholas Murray, The International Mind: An Argument for the Judicial Settlement of International Disputes. New York, Scribner, 1912.

Butler, Nicholas Murray, Is America Worth Saving? Addresses on National Problems and Party Policies. New York, Scribner, 1920.

Butler, Nicholas Murray, Liberty-Equality-Fraternity: Essays and Addresses on the Problems of Today and Tomorrow. New York, Scribner, 1942.

Butler, Nicholas Murray, Looking Forward: What Will the American People Do about It? Essays and Addresses on Matters National and International. New York, Scribner, 1932.

Butler, Nicholas Murray, The Path to Peace: Essays and Addresses on Peace and its Making. New York, Scribner, 1930.

Butler, Nicholas Murray, Scholarship and Service: The Policies and Ideals of a National University in a Modern Democracy. New York, Scribner, 1921.

Butler, Nicholas Murray, Why War? Essays and Addresses on War and Peace. New York, Scribner, 1940.

Butler, Nicholas Murray, A World in Ferment: Interpretations of the War for a New World. New York, Scribner, 1918.

Butler, Nicholas Murray, The World Today: Essays and Addresses. New York, Scribner, 1946.

Dinner to Nicholas Murray Butler. New York, Columbia University Press, 1932.

Thomas, Milton H., Bibliography of Nicholas Murray Butler, 1872-1932. New York, Columbia University Press, 1934.

Nicholas Murray Butler (April 2, 1862 – December 7, 1947) was an American philosopher, diplomat, and educator. Butler was president of Columbia University,[1] president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, and William Howard Taft's running mate in the 1912 United States presidential election. He became so well known and respected that The New York Times printed his Christmas greeting to the nation every year.

Contents

1 Early life and education

2 Presidency of Columbia University

3 Political activity

4 Internationalist

5 Personal life

6 Honors

7 Works

8 See also

9 Notes

10 Further reading

11 External links

Early life and education

Butler, great-grandson of Morgan John Rhys,[2] was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey to Mary Butler and manufacturing worker Henry Butler. He enrolled in Columbia College (later Columbia University) and joined the Peithologian Society. He earned his bachelor of arts degree in 1882, his master's degree in 1883 and his doctorate in 1884. Butler's academic and other achievements led Theodore Roosevelt to call him "Nicholas Miraculous." In 1885, Butler studied in Paris and Berlin and became a lifelong friend of future Secretary of State Elihu Root. Through Root he also met Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. In the fall of 1885, Butler joined the staff of Columbia's philosophy department.

In 1887, he co-founded with Grace Hoadley Dodge,[3] and became president of, the New York School for the Training of Teachers, which later affiliated with Columbia University and was renamed Teachers College, Columbia University, and from which a co-educational experimental and developmental unit became Horace Mann School.[4] From 1890 to 1891, Butler was a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Throughout the 1890s Butler served on the New Jersey Board of Education and helped form the College Entrance Examination Board.

Presidency of Columbia University

In 1901, Butler became acting president of Columbia University, and in 1902 formally became president. Among the many dignitaries in attendance at his investiture was President Roosevelt. Butler was president of Columbia for 43 years, the longest tenure in the university's history, retiring in 1945. As president, Butler carried out a major expansion of the campus, adding many new buildings, schools, and departments. These additions included Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, the first academic medical center in the world.

In 1919, Butler amended the admissions process to Columbia in order to limit the number of Jewish and Episcopal students. Butler's policy was successful[dubious – discuss] and the number of students hailing from New York City dropped from 54% to 23% stemming what one administrator[who?] called "the invasion of the Jewish student."[5] This is one of the reasons why Butler has been called an Anti-Semite.

In 1937 he was admitted as an honorary member of the New York Society of the Cincinnati.[6]

In 1941, the Pulitzer Prize fiction jury selected Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. The Pulitzer Board initially agreed with that judgment, but Butler, ex officio head of the Pulitzer board, found the novel offensive and persuaded the board to reverse its determination, so that no novel received the prize that year.[7]

During his lifetime, Columbia named its philosophy library for him; after he died, its main academic library, previously known as South Hall, was rechristened Butler Library. A faculty apartment building on 119th Street and Morningside Drive was also renamed in Butler's honour, as was a major prize in philosophy.

An in-depth look at Butler's time at Columbia University also can be found in The Goose-Step: A Study of American Education, by Upton Sinclair.

Political activity

Butler was a delegate to each Republican National Convention from 1888 to 1936; in 1912, after Vice President James S. Sherman died eight days before the presidential election, Butler was designated to receive the electoral votes that Sherman would have received: the Republican ticket won only 8 electoral votes from Utah and Vermont, finishing third behind the Democrats and the Progressives.

In 1916, Butler tried to secure the Republican presidential nomination for Elihu Root. Butler also sought the nomination for himself in 1920, without success.[8]

Butler believed that Prohibition was a mistake, with negative effects on the country. He became active in the successful effort for Repeal in 1933.

He credited John W. Burgess along with Alexander Hamilton for providing the philosophical basis of his Republican principles.[9]

In June 1936 Butler traveled to the Carnegie Endowment Peace Conference in London where, at the meeting, the question of gold being used internationally was considered.

Internationalist

Butler was the chair of the Lake Mohonk Conference on International Arbitration that met periodically from 1907 to 1912. In this time he was appointed president of the American branch of International Conciliation. Butler was also instrumental in persuading Andrew Carnegie to provide the initial $10 million funding for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Butler became head of international education and communication, founded the European branch of the Endowment headquartered in Paris, and was President of the Endowment from 1925 to 1945. For his work in this field, he received the Nobel Peace Prize for 1931 (shared with Jane Addams) "[For his promotion] of the Briand-Kellogg pact" and for his work as the "leader of the more establishment-oriented part of the American peace movement".

In December 1916 Butler, Roosevelt and other philanthropists including Scottish-born industrialist John C. Moffat, William Astor Chanler, Joseph Choate, Clarence Mackay, George von Lengerke Meyer, and John Grier Hibben purchased the Château de Chavaniac, birthplace of the Marquis de Lafayette in Auvergne, to serve as a headquarters for the French Heroes Lafayette Memorial Fund,[10] which was managed by Chanler's ex-wife Beatrice Ashley Chanler.[11][12]

Butler was President of the Pilgrims Society, which promotes Anglo-American friendship.[13] He served as President of the Pilgrims from 1928 to 1946. Butler was president of The American Academy of Arts and Letters from 1928 to 1941.

Personal life

Butler married Susanna Edwards Schuyler (1863–1903) in 1887 and had one daughter from that marriage. Susanna was the daughter of Jacob Rutsen Schuyler (1816–1887) and Susannah Haigh Edwards (born 1830). His wife died in 1903 and he married again in 1907 to Kate La Montagne, granddaughter of New York property developer Thomas E. Davis.[14] In 1940, Butler completed his autobiography with the publication of the second volume of Across the Busy Years.[15] When Butler became almost blind in 1945 at the age of eighty-three, he resigned from the posts he held and died two years later. Butler is buried at Cedar Lawn Cemetery, in Paterson, New Jersey.

Despite Butler's accomplishments[clarification needed], many people regarded him as arrogant. He autocratically dismissed faculty members who displeased him, such as the great classical scholar Harry Thurston Peck, and others who dared to question his dismissals, such as the civil rights pioneer Joel Elias Spingarn. He had little respect for Columbia's fine arts faculty, and stripped them of academic affairs voting rights in 1903, accelerating his deteriorating relationship with music professor Edward MacDowell; he went so far as to accuse MacDowell of unprofessional conduct and sloppy teaching, prompting MacDowell's abrupt resignation from Columbia in February 1904. In 1939, a former student of Butler's, Rolfe Humphries, published in the pages of Poetry an effort titled "Draft Ode for a Phi Beta Kappa Occasion" that followed a classical format of unrhymed blank verse in iambic pentameter with one classical reference per line. The first letters of each line of the resulting acrostic spelled out the message: "Nicholas Murray Butler is a horses [sic] ass." Upon discovering the "hidden" message, the irate editors ran a formal apology.[16] Randolph Silliman Bourne lampooned him as "Alexander Macintosh Butcher" in "One of our Conquerers", a 1915 essay he published in The New Republic.

Butler wrote and spoke voluminously on all manner of subjects ranging from education to world peace. Although marked by erudition and great learning, his work tended toward the portentous and overblown. In The American Mercury, the critic Dorothy Dunbar Bromley referred to Butler's pronouncements as "those interminable miasmas of guff."[17]

Honors

Knight Grand Commander in the Order of the Redeemer.[18]

Order of Saint Sava.

Grand Cross of the Order of the White Lion in 1926.[19]

Grand cordon of the Order of Leopold.

Knight Grand cross in the Order of the Crown of Italy.

Commander in the Order of the Red Eagle.

Knight Grand cross in the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus.

Doctor honoris causa - University of Szeged (Hungary) in 1931.

Nicholas Murray Butler, (born April 2, 1862, Elizabeth, N.J., U.S.—died Dec. 7, 1947, New York, N.Y.), American educator, publicist, and political figure who (with Jane Addams) shared the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1931 and served as president of Columbia University from 1901 to 1945.

Nicholas Murray Butler

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Born: April 2, 1862 Elizabeth New Jersey

Died: December 7, 1947 (aged 85) New York City New York

Awards And Honors: Nobel Prize (1931)

Butler was educated at Columbia College, which became his intellectual and occupational home for the rest of his life. There, under the influence of Frederick Barnard (president of the college), he decided to prepare for a professional career in education. After completing his undergraduate work in 1882, Butler continued at Columbia as a graduate fellow in philosophy, taking his doctorate in 1884. A year in Paris and Berlin completed his formal education.

Butler was appointed an assistant in philosophy at Columbia in 1885, becoming professor of philosophy and education in 1890 and president of the university in 1901. He held the latter post until his retirement in 1945. Under his leadership Columbia grew from a provincial college into a university of world renown.

As a young man Butler strongly criticized the pedagogical methods of his time. As founder and president of the Industrial Education Association (1886–91), he played a central role in the establishment of the New York College for the Training of Teachers (renamed Teachers College, Columbia University in 1892). In later years Butler criticized pedagogical reform, steadfastly defending the “great tradition” of humanism in education and lashing out against such contemporary trends as vocationalism in education and behaviourism in psychology as the “new barbarism.”

Butler was a champion of international understanding, helping to establish the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, of which he was a trustee and later president (1925–45). He was active in the councils of the Republican Party for more than half a century, attending many national conventions. He was also president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1928–41).

Nicholas Murray Butler (April 2, 1862 – December 7, 1947) was an American educator, philosopher, and diplomat, an advocate of peace through education. The co-winner with Jane Addams of the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize, Butler served as president of Columbia University (1902-1945), and president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (1925-1945). His vision for education, which he saw as the foundation of successful society, was of high academic standards, the intellectual pursuit of knowledge, and training in character. Under his leadership, Columbia became a world renowned university. Butler was concerned not only with American society, but invested much energy in work toward peace in the world, regarding education as key to the establishment of international peace.

Contents

1 Life

2 Work

2.1 Criticism

3 Legacy

4 Works

5 References

6 External links

7 Credits

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Life

Butler was born on April 2, 1862, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, to manufacturer Henry L. Butler and Mary Murray Butler, daughter of Nicholas Murray, a clergyman and writer. He enrolled in Columbia College (which became Columbia University in 1896) and earned his B.A. degree in 1882, his Master's degree in 1883 and his doctorate in 1884. Butler's academic and other achievements led Theodore Roosevelt to call him "Nicholas Miraculous" (Rosenthal 2006).

In 1885 Butler studied in Paris and Berlin and became a lifelong friend of future United States Secretary of State Elihu Root. Through Root he also met Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. In the fall of 1885, Butler joined the staff of Columbia's philosophy department.

In 1887 he co-founded and became president of the New York School for the Training of Teachers, which later affiliated with Columbia University and was renamed Teachers College, Columbia University. He married Susanna Edwards Schuyler, and had one daughter from that marriage. Throughout the 1890s Butler served on the New Jersey Board of Education and participated in forming the College Entrance Examination Board.

In 1901 Butler became acting president of Columbia University and in 1902 formally became president. United States President Theodore Roosevelt attended Butler's inauguration. Butler remained president of Columbia for 42 years, during which time the university expanded its campus, erected a number of new buildings, and added several new schools and departments. Among the innovations he oversaw was the opening of the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, the first academic medical center in the world.

However, the dark side of his presidency was that he worked to limit the admission of Jewish students to the university, and to prevent the election of Jews to the Board of Trustees.

Butler’s wife Susanna died in 1903 and he remarried in 1907, to Kate La Montagne.

Butler’s political ambitions become obvious already early in his career. He was a delegate to each Republican National Convention, from 1888 to 1936. In the presidential election of 1912, Butler received the eight vice-presidential electoral votes that would have gone to Vice-President James Sherman, who had died shortly before the popular election. In 1916 Butler failed in an effort to secure the Republican presidential nomination for Elihu Root. Butler himself attempted unsuccessfully to secure the Republican nomination for president in 1920 and 1928.

Butler became disillusioned with the negative effects he believed the 1920 national prohibition of alcohol was having on the country. He became active in the successful effort to bring about the repeal of prohibition in 1933.

Butler became the chair of the Lake Mohonk Conference on International Arbitration that met periodically from 1907 to 1912. In that time he was appointed president of the American branch of International Conciliation. Butler was also instrumental in persuading Andrew Carnegie to make the initial investment in the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Butler became head of international education and communication, founded the European branch of the Endowment headquartered in Paris, and was president of the Endowment for 20 years.

Continuing the clear sense that he was trusted by the many internationalists in power, Butler was made president of the elite Anglo-American integration society, the Pilgrims Society. He served as president of the Pilgrims from 1928 to 1946. Butler was also president of The American Academy of Arts and Letters from 1928–1941.

Butler served as president of Columbia until 1945. When he became almost blind in 1945 at the age of 83, he resigned from the posts he held and died two years later. He is buried at Cedar Lawn Cemetery, in Paterson, New Jersey.

Work

Butler was known as a hard working man. He graduated from high school at the age of 13, and obtained his Ph.D. at 22. At 23 he joined the staff of Columbia University. Wherever he went and whatever he was doing, he always wanted to be the best and to achieve the most. He wrote and spoke voluminously on all manner of subjects ranging from education to world peace.

In the beginning of his career he started as an educational administrator. He advocated for the construction of a modern university system, which would be the backbone of a strong nation. In the second half of the nineteenth century, higher learning in America was still in a rather primitive state, with several colleges around the nation as the main institutions of higher education. Research universities were not considered as important as liberal arts colleges, which had the purpose to shape moral character rather than encourage analytical thinking. When in 1876, Johns Hopkins University opened its doors, many, including Butler, regarded it as one of the most important events in the history of learning. Butler thought of it as “the beginning of a new era in the history of higher education.”

Butler believed that universities are necessary for the establishment of a modern society. In his work at Columbia, he was driven by an idea that Columbia had a sacred mission—to generate a force of intellectuals who would build a new world. For that purpose, he held that universities in general should raise the quality of education. He claimed America had the dubious distinction of being “the best half-educated country in the world.”

Besides teaching on various subjects, education should also keep the tradition of disciplining the character. He said: “There are many things that go to make up an education, but there are just two things without which no man can ever hope to have an education and these two things are character and good manners.” Education thus had a role to shape both people’s intellect and their character. He held that educated people are necessary for world peace. He firmly defending the “great tradition” of humanism in education, and criticized pedagogical reforms, vocationalism, and over-specialization in education.

Butler proposed that universities introduce a standardize method of college admissions. His initiative was applied in a form of the College Entrance Examination Board, which limited entrance to higher education to the intellectual elite. Because of that, many critics objected that Butler was an elitist. His autobiographer, Michael Rosenthal (2006) wrote that Butler liked democracy "so long as it didn't interfere with the freedom of a small cadre of the right people to run things." He was famous as an extremely controlling person, always wanted to be “on top of everything.” He supported academic freedom in theory, but during both world wars he required all Columbia faculty absolutely support the war effort.

Butler not only promoted the merging of education and politics in order to achieve world peace, but also actively participated in efforts to bring that peace. He was the head of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. It was Butler who proposed to Frank Kellogg the idea for the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and who actively supported that pact for years. Kellogg-Briand Pact, which was signed on August 27, 1928, was an international treaty that renounced war as an instrument of national policy. For his promotion of the Pact Butler received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.

Criticism

Butler's critics objected that he was too naïve, putting too much focus on rhetoric and organization of numerous peace conferences, and too little on “real problems” in the world. His critics also objected that Butler supported fascist movements in Europe, and for hosting a German ambassador at Columbia shortly after the Nazis came to power in 1933.

The dark spot in Butler’s career was his attitude toward Jews. Although not overtly anti-Semitic, Butler had conflicted and complex feelings about Jews. On the one hand, he had great respect for many Jewish individuals, especially in the upper reaches of the sciences, law, and academia. Thus, it was during his tenure that Lionel Trilling became the first tenured Jew in Columbia's English department. Butler was also repulsed by crude displays of anti-Semitism. When the University of Heidelberg protested Butler's selection of a Jewish delegate to represent Columbia at Heidelberg's 550th anniversary celebration, Butler indignantly replied that at Columbia, delegates were selected on the basis of merit, not race. On the other hand Butler kept discriminatory policies against Jews. For many years of his presidency, Columbia had a strict quota limiting the number of Jews who could attend the school.

Legacy

Butler was president of Columbia University for 43 years, the longest tenure in the university's history. He doubled the size of the campus and increased the student body from four thousand to 34,000. Columbia later named its Butler Library building and a faculty apartment building in Butler's honor, along with a major prize in philosophy.

In 1931 Butler won Nobel Prize for his achievements in the area of international peace, especially in connection with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

His work on the College Entrance Examination Board and his advocacy for the establishment of a standardized entrance exam is present today in a form of different exams required for prospective students to enter universities.

Butler's name was so widely recognized and his influence so great that he was able to deliver a Christmas greeting to the nation every year in The New York Times. During his lifetime he received 37 honorary degrees, 13 memberships of foreign societies, and 17 decorations from foreign countries. His work, however, is seldom discussed today, and his name has generally fallen into oblivion.

Nicholas M. Butler (1862–1947)

Early Career, Columbia University, Political Career

President of Columbia University from 1902 to 1945, Nicholas Murray Butler was a prominent figure in the development of the modern American university and of public secondary education.

Born into a religious and politically active middle-class family in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Butler valued public service from an early age. He graduated from Paterson High School in New Jersey at age thirteen. Following independent study, he entered Columbia College in 1878 and began a sixty-nine-year association with that institution.

Early Career

While an undergraduate, Butler gained the attention of Columbia president Frederick A. P. Barnard. Butler considered a political and legal career, however, Barnard convinced him that he could have more impact in the emerging field of professionally directed education. Butler earned an A.B (1882), M.A. (1883) and Ph.D. (1884), all in philosophy, at Columbia, specializing in the writings of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. He studied for a year at the universities of Berlin and Paris.

In 1885 Butler returned to Columbia as an assistant professor of philosophy. He quickly joined a faculty contingent seeking to expand Columbia College into a European-style graduate university–a vision shared by Barnard and his successor, Seth Low. As Low assumed the presidency in 1890, he asked Butler to outline this proposal to the faculty in a general assembly. The presentation marked Butler as a rising star. Elected dean of the philosophy department, he played significant roles in establishing Columbia's summer school and relocating the university to Morningside Heights on the upper West Side of Manhattan.

During this stage of his career, Butler saw that a professionally guided public school system would be vital to industrial-age America. This system would require competent teacher-training institutions, a professional literature base, separation from politics, and organized associations. When Barnard's plans for a Columbia training school for teachers was thwarted, he persuaded Butler in 1887 to accept the presidency of the Industrial Education Association of New York, which promoted vocational training for working-class children. Butler refocused the aims of the association on teacher training and encouraged it to purchase land adjoining Columbia. By 1893 it had become Teachers College, affiliated with Columbia.

In 1891 Butler founded the Educational Review, a journal of educational philosophies and developments. Serving as editor until 1921, Butler invited national educational and political figures to contribute. He also helped transform the National Education Association from an intellectual association into an organization advocating Progressive educational policies. While its president (1894–1895), Butler formed committees to examine the transition of students from school to college. One notable result was the introduction of the College Entrance Examination Board (1900), which standardized college entrance tests and clarified the role of secondary education.

Butler's interest in politics helped to establish professional autonomy for education systems. From 1887 through 1895 he served on the New Jersey State Board of Education. He chaired the Paterson school board from 1892 through 1893. In these roles he led efforts to remove state political interference from local New Jersey school systems. In New York City, he did the same, spurring the creation of a citywide school board that emphasized professionalism and policy over political spoils (1895–1897). When New York City's consolidation was complete, New York State sought a similar reform with Butler's advice, completed in 1904. During this time, Butler established a friendship with Governor Theodore Roosevelt, who nicknamed him "Nicholas Miraculous."

Columbia University

When Low resigned as Columbia's president in 1901, Butler became acting president, and president a year later. During his forty-four-year tenure, Columbia experienced phenomenal growth in enrollment, resources, and prestige. In 1911 Columbia's 7,500 students made it the largest university in the world. By 1914 it had the largest university endowment in America. Adopting a "corporate" model, Butler centralized the administration and ended the faculty's power to make top administrative appointments. He believed faculty should do what they do best–teach and research. His greatest faculty challenge involved academic freedom. Butler believed a faculty member's academic freedom was limited to an area of expertise and extended only to what he termed "university freedom," defined as a university's right to reach its institutional potential. No individual was greater than the university or had the right to harm its reputation. This issue subsided somewhat following World War I, and Butler took pride in the diversity of faculty perspectives and talent. Columbia in this age was often referred to as the "American Acropolis."

Political Career

His friendship with Theodore Roosevelt placed him in the president's inner circle until they disagreed over Roosevelt's antitrust initiatives. In 1913 he opposed Theodore Roosevelt's presidential bid and received Republican electoral votes for the vice presidency. He ran for the presidency on the Republican ticket in 1920, receiving New York's convention votes as "favorite son." He opposed the party's embrace of prohibition, however, and lost clout. His interests shifted toward international issues as American diplomatic influence increased. From 1925 to 1945 he was president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In 1927 he assisted the U.S. State Department in developing the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which called for disarmament and conscientious objection to war. In 1931 he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Jane Addams.

Optimism is essential to achievement and it is also the foundation of courage and true progress.

Nicholas Murray Butler

Motivational, Positive, Success

Nicholas Murray Butler (1951). “Commencement Addresses”

63 Copy quote   

Those people who think only of themselves, are hopelessly uneducated. They are not educated, no matter how instructed they may be.

Nicholas Murray Butler

Thinking, People, May

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I divide the world into three Classes - The few who make things happen, the many who watch things happen, the overwhelming majority who have no notion of what happens.

Nicholas Murray Butler

Class, People, Achievement

33 Copy quote   

The limited liability corporation is the greatest single invention of modern times.

Nicholas Murray Butler

Corporations, Modern, Invention

24 Copy quote   

An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less.

Nicholas Murray Butler

Funny, Encouraging, Education

Commencement address at Columbia University

25 Copy quote   

The old world order changed when this war-storm broke. The old international order passed away as suddenly, as unexpectedly, and as completely as if it had been wiped out by a gigantic flood, by a great tempest, or by a volcanic eruption. The old world order died with the setting of that day's sun and a new world order is being born while I speak, with birth-pangs so terrible that it seems almost incredible that life could come out of such fearful suffering and such overwhelming sorrow.

Nicholas Murray Butler

War, Nwo, World Government

Nicholas Murray Butler (1917). “A World in Ferment: Interpretations of the War for a New World”, New York : Scribner

31 Copy quote   

Optimism is the foundation of courage.

Nicholas Murray Butler

Life, Appreciation, Courage

25 Copy quote   

Fundamentally, the force that rules the world is conduct, whether it be moral or immoral. If it is moral, at least there may be hope for the world. If immoral, there is not only no hope, but no prospect of anything but destruction of all that has been accomplished during the last 5,000 years.

Nicholas Murray Butler

Years, World, May

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Cherish yesterday. dream tomorrow, live like crazy today!!

Nicholas Murray Butler

Dream, Crazy, Yesterday

13 Copy quote   

There are many things that go to make up an education, but there are just two things without which no man can ever hope to have an education and these two things are character and good manners.

Nicholas Murray Butler

Education, Character, Men

12 Copy quote   

The youth of today and the youth of tomorrow will be accorded an almost unequaled opportunity for great accomplishment and for human service.

Nicholas Murray Butler

Opportunity, Youth Of Today, Accomplishment

18 Copy quote   

Persecution on racial and religious grounds has absolutely no place in a nation given over to liberty.

Nicholas Murray Butler

Religious, Atheism, Liberty

18 Copy quote   

Every attempt, by whatever authority, to fix a maximum of productive labor by a given worker in a given time is an unjust restriction upon his freedom and a limitation of his right to make the most of himself in order that he may rise in the scale of the social and economic order in which he lives. The notion that all human beings born into this world enter at birth into a definite social and economic classification, in which classification they must remain permanently through life, is wholly false and fatal to a progressive civilization.

Nicholas Murray Butler

Life, Order, Civilization

8 Copy quote   

Time was invented by the Almighty God in order to give ideas a chance.

Nicholas Murray Butler

Time, Order, Ideas

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Businesses planned for service are apt to succeed businesses planned for profit are apt to fail.

Nicholas Murray Butler

Succeed, Failing, Profit

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Modern mathematics, that most astounding of intellectual creations, has projected the mind's eye through infinite time and the mind's hand into boundless space.

Nicholas Murray Butler

Eye, Science, Hands

Nicholas Murray Butler (1895). “What Knowledge is of Most Worth? ...”

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Many peoples tombstones should read, 'Died at 30. Buried at 60.'

Nicholas Murray Butler

Tombstone, Should, Buried

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This desire of knowledge and the wonder which it hopes to satisfy are the driving power behind all the changes that we, with careless, question-begging inference, call progress.

Nicholas Murray Butler

Knowledge, Progress, Desire

Nicholas Murray Butler (1911). “Philosophy”

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America is the best half-educated country in the world.

Nicholas Murray Butler

Education, Country, America

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To exclude religious teaching altogether from education... is a very dangerous and curious tendency. The result is to give paganism a new importance and influence.

Nicholas Murray Butler

Christian, Religious, Teaching

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The words that bore the deathless verse of Homer from bard to a group of fascinated hearers, and with whose fading sounds the poems passed beyond recall, are fixed on the printed page in a hundred tongues. They carry to a million eyes what once could reach but a hundred ears.

Nicholas Murray Butler

Eye, Ears, Pages

Nicholas Murray Butler (1911). “Philosophy”

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The more that one studies the history of the building of the American nation, the clearer it becomes that it may be justly described as a laboratory experiment in understanding and in solving the world problems of tomorrow.

Nicholas Murray Butler

America, Understanding, Historical

"The Age of the Americas: An Address Delivered at the Parrish Memorial Art Museum, Southampton, Long Island, September 6, 1942".

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What society needs is broad men sharpened to a point.

Nicholas Murray Butler

Men, Needs, Broads

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The analytical geometry of Descartes and the calculus of Newton and Leibniz have expanded into the marvelous mathematical method

Nicholas Murray Butler

A petition to have a fascist speaker banned from campus circulates to no effect. Increasingly confrontational student activists promise to take matters into their own hands. The American Civil Liberties Union calls for restraint and respect. Eventually, tensions boil over and a violent street battle erupts between protesters and the police.

While this scene has all the hallmarks of recent U.S. campus clashes between left-wing students and right-wing speakers, it actually happened on December 12, 1933, when an emissary from Nazi Germany spoke at Columbia University.

Despite the recent rise in high-profile “antifa” actions, especially in light of the violence in Charlottesville, anti-fascist organizing has existed for a long time. As in cases today, a common goal of this organization was the restriction of fascist political speech. But unlike today, anti-fascists at Columbia in the ’30s had to contend with direct institutional support for fascist governments.

“National in spirit”

Columbia’s relationship with the future Axis Powers—Germany, Japan, and Italy—begins as early as 1926. Casa Italiana, now the home of the relatively uncontroversial Italian Academy for Advanced Studies, was originally the fruit of a collaboration between the University and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

Frank Rosengarten’s book, Through Partisan Eyes, notes that Casa Italiana was funded by businessmen who “were sympathetic to fascism.” The building was often used to promote the fascist government, such as when its grand opening was a fascist propaganda bonanza attended by the Fascisti League of North America. Here, the Italian ambassador praised Italy’s “spiritual, political, and economic” rebirth under fascist rule.

According to Professor Robert McCaughey, historian and author of the book Stand, Columbia, the notoriously egotistical University president (and library namesake) Nicholas Murray Butler “had a personal stake in seeing Columbia—and himself—as an international figure.” This led to the University seeking ties with rising fascist leaders.

McCaughey speculates that Butler’s support for fascism also stemmed in part from his negative views of Italians. Although the Italian community in New York was “divided” on fascism at the time, Butler saw Italians as a people who needed the “heavy hand” that only Mussolini could provide.

Even after its opening, Casa Italiana often functioned as an outpost for fascist propaganda. Prince Ludovico Spada Potenziani, “one of the strongest leaders in Fascist [sic] Italy” at the time and Ambassador Franco Ciarlantini came to speak at the center in 1928. Giuseppe Prezzolini, director of Casa Italiana itself, praised fascist education policies as “national in spirit” in a 1932 speech.

According to a journal article by Stephen H. Norwood, Butler thanked Dr. Prezzolini for translating a “charming” letter from Mussolini, writing that “[i]t is pleasant, indeed, to know that he is following our work and appreciates it.”

Morningside resistance

The University’s long relationship with fascism also provided ample opportunities for activists to fight against it. According to a 1931 Spectator article, Lauro De Bosis, “regarded as an ardent Fascist,” performed research on literature at the Casa Italiana for two years on the Italian government’s dime. At the same time, however, he secretly led an underground anti-fascist organization called the National Alliance for Liberty and smuggled anti-Mussolini propaganda into Italy. (De Bosis later died in a plane crash while dropping anti-fascist leaflets on Rome.)

Casa Italiana officials, “whose policy it has always been to try to keep political agitators out of the Italian house,” refused to believe the stories about their former resident’s activities.

De Bosis was not the only Morningside Heights resident to resist fascist rule. Franz Boas, a Columbia professor, was well-known for his harsh criticisms of racism and what he called the “Nordic Nonsense” of Nazi eugenic theory.

This outspokenness (along with his Jewish heritage) earned Boas condemnation and book burnings in Germany, which the professor dismissed in stride. But he took the growing fascist threat in America seriously. He revealed a decree ordering German students in American universities to participate in Nazi propaganda efforts in an October 1933 letter to Congress.

But while these students and faculty members pushed back against fascism, Butler cozied up to fascist dignitaries. On November 25, 1931, he and his wife held a reception at Casa Italiana for Italian foreign minister Dino Grandi. Guarded by legions of policemen, the high-ranking fascist official “was greeted by guests with shouts of ‘Hail,’ [sic] and the Fascist salute.”

Unlike in the case of fascist Italy, Butler never publicly condoned Nazi Germany, which he saw as an “aberration.” But he was very slow to condemn its crimes.

McCaughey emphasizes that “Butler was not the most anti-Semitic of New Yorkers during his period,” but does concede that “he was impressively tolerant of other anti-Semites and suspicious of the motives of people who were saying that Hitler was doing all these dastardly things.”

It’s not surprising, then, that Butler hosted a warm welcome for Nazi German ambassador Hans Luther two years later.

“A man or woman of high intelligence and good manners”

For obvious reasons, Jewish students at Columbia were highly uncomfortable with the rise of fascism. What was less obvious was the role of Jewish students in creating the activist infrastructure that opposed these officials.

Twenty blocks north of Columbia, something was brewing at the “Harvard of the proletariat.” Tuition-free at the time, the City College of New York attracted many first-generation Jewish immigrants involved with organized labor. These were the same kind of students who, according to Norwood, Butler attempted to keep out of Columbia with discriminatory measures.

According to When the Old Left Was Young by Robert Cohen, these Jewish activists formed the early core of the National Student League, which soon grew beyond its roots to represent students of many different backgrounds. Its Columbia chapter, the Social Problems Club, had achieved nationwide fame for its combined labor and press freedom campaign in spring 1932.

Ambassador Luther was originally invited to Columbia on November 15, 1934. When Luther’s speech was postponed by a few weeks, ostensibly due to an illness, the student and faculty opposition to Ambassador Luther snowballed out of control. The left-wing activist Social Problems Club, which had planned to picket the original event, began organizing a publicity campaign urging Butler to cancel the event.

Other groups joined the campaign, including the Socialist Club and even a Jewish group at New York University. Several faculty members formed their own committee urging Butler to disinvite Ambassador Luther. Outcry over his speech grew to the point that Columbia moved the venue to a much more “intimate” auditorium a little over a week before the event.

However, not everyone was on board with the Social Problems Club campaign. Just as the American Civil Liberties Union today defends white nationalist groups’ right to assembly, the head of Columbia’s Civil Liberties Union endorsed “the right of the Nazis to make public fools of themselves.”

But the strongest opposition to the anti-fascist campaign came from Butler himself. He criticized the protesters for advocating “illiberal theories,” arguing in the vein of academic freedom that “there is no subject which a company of scholars, such as that assembled on Morningside Heights, is not prepared to have presented to it by a man or woman of high intelligence and good manners.”

Even the Civil Liberties Union, in its push to allow Ambassador Luther to speak, conceded that “it would be difficult to have an opposition speaker on the same program”—probably because the Nazis had passed the Enabling Act to stamp out political dissent that year.

As some modern anti-fascists have argued, debates about “free speech” should take into account which opinions are backed by state power. A faculty committee to support exiled German academics in the 1930s echoed this argument: “Inviting the Nazi envoy to lecture on the foreign policy of his government and giving him an official reception means not only failing in our duty to defend our German colleagues,” but also equivocating on “those fundamental concepts of civilized humanity about which there can be no two sides.”

Butler disagreed. Despite the violence happening in Germany at the time, Columbia’s president asserted that “the official diplomatic representative to the Government of the United States on the part of a friendly people … is entitled to be received throughout our country with the greatest courtesy and respect.”

Norwood describes Butler as uncomfortable with the vocal Jewish opposition to Hitler and “strongly committed to upper-class formality and decorum, and repression of emotion in public.” Butler’s courtesy and decorum would soon clash with a mobilized mass of students, Jewish and non-Jewish alike. Because the Social Problems Club was already experienced with mobilizing students across New York, it was able to muster a large presence in opposition to Ambassador Luther’s speech.

Battle on Broadway

On the night of December 12, 1933, Luther’s rescheduled speech, a crowd of over 1,000 protesters braved the cold while being held back by dozens of police officers stationed on Broadway between 116th and 120th streets. Although the audience for the ambassador’s speech “seemed unperturbed by the noise going on outside,” the speech was interrupted three times by women within the audience shouting anti-fascist slogans.

Russell Potter, director of Columbia’s Institute for Arts and Sciences and host of the event, helped plainclothes police eject each protester, including one who was a German instructor at Columbia. According to Norwood, Potter called the hecklers “ill-mannered children.”

Outside the auditorium, police arrested a woman for handing out pamphlets. Several hundred people disappeared into the subway, gathering on 59th Street and Eighth Avenue to rally outside the courtroom until Judge Thomas Aurelio dismissed the charges.

Although the protesters weren’t allowed to gather outside the auditorium, which was at Horace Mann, every time the police dispersed them they attempted to gather there again. There were fistfights between officers and protesters on the iced-over Broadway, though no serious injuries were reported at the time.

The next day, the ACLU criticized the police for stifling the protesters’ freedom of speech.

When an officer inexplicably drove up to the crowd of protesters in a squad car and pettily demanded they raise the American flag “six inches higher,” the demonstrators shouted him down with quotations from the Gettysburg Address.

Too little, too late

The protests didn’t stop Ambassador Luther from speaking. But the reaction to Ambassador Luther set the stage for a student movement that eventually forced Butler to renounce fascism.

In the wake of the protests, Columbia declined to reappoint Jerome Klein, an art instructor of Jewish heritage who had signed the petition against Ambassador Luther, according to Norwood. Students protested the decision, accusing the administration of anti-Semitism.

In March 1936, the same month that Nazi authorities remilitarized the Rhineland in preparation for war, they announced a massive ceremony planned in June to celebrate the 550th anniversary of the University of Heidelberg. Norwood writes that the Nazi government “believed that by securing the participation of distinguished academics from the United States … it could project an image of being highly civilized.”

Delegates from Columbia were among those invited. Despite the administration’s attempts to keep the whole affair quiet, the student body once again protested against the University’s collaboration with fascism.

Several faculty members, including Boas, signed a petition calling for Columbia to decline the invitation, and the student government passed a resolution condemning the Nazi “violation of those principles of free inquiry and academic freedom.” Butler refused to speak to a committee about the invitation. In response, students staged a mock book-burning and picketed outside of his house.

A few weeks later, according to Norwood, Butler complained that “[w]e may next expect to be told that we must not read Goethe’s Faust, or hear Wagner’s Lohengrin, or visit the great picture galleries at Dresden, or study Kant’s Kritik, because we so heartily disapprove of the present form of government in Germany.”

Administrators also attempted to expel Robert Burke, one of the organizers of the mock book-burning, for leading “a disorderly demonstration in front of the [president’s] house … in which he referred to the President disrespectfully.” Norwood also writes that Columbia administrators were “personally uncomfortable” with Burke’s working-class Irish background and involvement in labor activism.

However, the last straw came in May 1937. Nazi Germany once again invited American academics to the University of Göttingen for the University’s 200th anniversary. Although several American universities had already declined the invitation, Butler ignored several petitions and telegrams. One week later, instead of officially rejecting the invitation, Butler chose to not send a delegate to the celebration—no doubt fearing a repeat of the student unrest that had shaken the University several times during his administration.

According to Norwood, this marked a “turning point” in Butler’s stances, and during the anti-Jewish violence of Kristallnacht in 1938, Butler condemned the Nazi regime in no uncertain terms. But this condemnation, more than 10 years after the beginning of Columbia’s relationship with fascism, came only after a lengthy student campaign that functioned in direct opposition to the administration’s wishes.

“I think it permanently damaged [Butler’s] reputation and constitutes not a very positive story about Columbia,” McCaughey says, ”because [the University] was slow to recognize what everybody knows now was the case, but didn’t at the time.”