1923: “Columbia Attracts Scholars of World”

Abstract

My starting point is an article I read in the New York Times a couple of months ago, an old copy of the Times. Older copies of the Times can be worthier of note. This article was dated February 25, 1923. It caught my attention: Columbia Attracts Scholars of World / Group Will Be Centre of Summer Session to Begin on July 9 / to Last Six Weeks / A group of men of letters will be the centre of a world gathering of scholars at Columbia University during the Summer Session of six weeks [...]. France will send Joseph Bedier, Professor of Medieval Language and Literature at the College de France, Paris, and a member of the Academy; Emile Bourgeois, Professor of Modern Political and Diplomatic History at the University of Paris; Paul Hazard, Professor of Modern Comparative Literature at the University of Paris; and Edouard Le Roy, Professor of Modern Philosophy at the College de France. / These scholars, together with Dr. Bernard Fay, Fellow in Letters, will give a course on civilization. This was a major venture for Columbia anda significant metropolitan event. The Romanic Review anticipated the occasion with relish: Bedier, Hazard, Fay, Le Roy, Bourgeois had been secured to give courses of lectures at the coming summer session of Columbia University. The university was eager to welcome these distinguished visiting professors. (1) The Times returned to the big news on July 8, 1923, the eve of the start of the university's twenty-fourth summer session. More than 1,000 courses would be offered to more than 12,000 students from all around the country, if not the world: With the arrival today on the Savoie of the delegation of instructors headed by Joseph Bedier [...], the Continental contingent of teachers will be complete. The delegation now included a sixth member, Raoul Blanchard (1877-1965), a geographer from the University of Grenoble, who long held another appointment at Harvard (1922-36). (2) The article went on, raving, Courses in [...] will be an outstanding feature of the session. The general course of civilization will be opened by J. J. Jusserand, the Ambassador, tomorrow at 4 P.M. in Horace Mann Auditorium, which stood at 120th Street and Broadway. Jean Jules Jusserand (1855-1932), who was the ambassador in Washington since 1902 (and would stay until 1925), had had several opportunities to be in contact with Nicholas M. Butler, Columbia's president from 1901 to 1945. He had been awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1917. He owed Butler a favor. (3) This was a time when ambassadors, as well as University presidents, remained in their jobs for long stints. The idea was that each of the six visiting professors would give his own seminar on his subject, and that they would also team-teach a grandiose course on civilization, each giving five lectures: Blanchard on the geographical influence on history; Bedier on the classical influence in literature; Hazard on France and continental literary movements; Fay on and American literary crosscurrents; Le Roy on contemporary philosophical movements in France; and Bourgeois on national traditions. The program was the most ambitious ever undertaken at a Columbia summer session, and was described by the university as a further step in the general effort of educational institutions in France and America to bring the two peoples into more intimate intellectual contact. On the same day, a second article in the Times, entitled French at Columbia, gave more details: Instead of offering a scrappy glimpse and a few isolated details, as has heretofore always been done, Columbia is going, for the first time in the history of American teaching, to offer the student the chance of becoming thoroughly acquainted with all that is most brilliant and most significant in culture without his having to leave New York to find it. …