BUTLER, NICHOLAS MURRAY 1862-1947

President of columbia university

Accomplishments

Nicholas Murray Butler was instrumental in remaking Columbia College into Columbia University during his tenure as a philosophy professor (1885-1901) and as the university's president (1902-1945). Under his leadership in the 1920s and 1930s, Columbia University experienced tremendous growth in staff, students, and facilities. Butler founded the Teachers College as a key part of the university in 1889, and during the 1920s he hired John Dewey, William Heard Kilpatrick, and George S. Counts to teach in the Teachers College. Butler also worked to standardize college-entrance and teacher-certification requirements. In addition, he was active in national and international politics, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931 for his work on the Pact of Paris.

Early Career

Butler was born into a middle-class family in Elizabeth, New Jersey. After graduating from Paterson High School at the age of thirteen, he continued his studies privately until he enrolled in Columbia College in 1878. Upon graduating in 1882, he received a three-year fellowship in letters from the college and earned his M.A. in 1883 and his Ph.D. in 1884. After a year of study in Europe, Butler returned to Columbia. In addition to his teaching he served, from 1887 to 1895, on the New Jersey State Board of Education, through which he encouraged nonpartisan control of education, the abolishment of teacher certification by local authorities, and the creation of manual-training courses. After settling in New York City in 1894, Butler was instrumental in the centralization of the education system in the city. He also served as president (1894-1895) of the National Education Association, helping to establish nationwide standards for local school boards. In 1887, as president of the Industrial Education Association, he promoted the professional training of public-school teachers. In 1889 the association's school was chartered, with Butler as its president, as the New York College for the Training of Teachers (renamed the Teachers College in 1892). In 1893, due in large part to Butler's efforts, the Teachers College became affiliated with Columbia. Butler also assisted in the founding of the College Entrance Examination Board (1900), serving as its chairman from 1901 to 1914.

Growth of Columbia University

As a faculty member Butler was a leader among those who thought Columbia College should become Columbia University. In 1890 he presented to the trustees a plan to expand the school to provide advanced training for graduate students as well as Columbia College seniors. The plan was adopted with some modifications, and Butler was elected dean of the philosophy department by his fellow faculty members. Following the resignation of Columbia president Seth Low in 1901, Butler became Columbia's acting president before becoming president in 1902. Under his administration Columbia University experienced unprecedented growth. More than any other university in the country, Columbia emphasized graduate education. Butler enlarged faculty ranks with some of the best individuals in their fields, creating at Columbia what has been called "the American Acropolis." He also increased administrative centralization at the university, justifying this move by claiming that it freed faculty from administrative chores so that they could devote more time to teaching. Critics complained that under Butler's tenure Columbia College's needs were slighted in deference to those of the university. They also pointed to the many resignations and dismissals of faculty members (among them critic Joel E. Spingarn, comparative-literature professor Henry W. L. Dana, and historian Charles A. Beard) who disagreed with Butler's policies as evidence of the president's dictatorial leadership. Butler produced no important book-length scholarship but did publish more than thirty-two hundred essays, speeches, reviews, press re-leases, and reports. His most famous writing is a two-volume autobiography entitled Across the Busy Years (1939-1940), which discusses his experiences during the years 1916 through 1939.

Political Life. Throughout his adult life Butler participated in national and international politics. Between 1901 and 1908 he was a close confidant of President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1913 he received Republican electoral votes for the vice presidency of the United States. In 1920 he briefly sought the nomination for president of the United States but soon shifted his support to Harding, believing that his election would be the best way to get the country into the League of Nations. But in the 1920s Butler became disenchanted with the Republican Party's support of Prohibition and high tariffs. In New York he led the campaign against the Eighteenth Amendment until its repeal. In 1927 the State Department asked his help in drafting what would become the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Butler delegated the task to Columbia professors Joseph P. Chamberlain and James T. Shotwell, then went on a public speaking campaign in support of its ratification. He was one of the founders of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and served as its president from 1925 to 1945. In 1931 he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with social reformer Jane Adams.

Acclaim

Butler was a proud man, and he took great pains to ensure that his biographical entry in Who's Who remained the longest entry, surpassing the biographies of Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. H. G. Wells once referred to Butler as "the champion international visitor and retriever of foreign orders and degrees." In all, Butler received thirty-seven degrees from international universities and decorations from fifteen countries.

Sources:

Nicholas Butler, Across the Busy Years: Recollections and Reflections, 2 volumes (New York; Scribners, 1939-1940);

Albert Marrin, Nicholas Murray Butler (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1976).

Nicholas Murray Butler

The American educator Nicholas Murray Butler (1862-1947) was president of Columbia University during its period of greatest expansion, in which it acquired an international reputation as a center of research and scholarship.

Nicholas Murray Butler was born in Elizabeth, N.J., on April 2, 1862, the son of a manufacturer. He graduated from Columbia College, New York City, in 1882 and earned his doctorate there in 1884. After a year's study in Berlin and Paris he returned to Columbia to become an assistant in philosophy. His interest in the education of teachers led him to help organize, and to head from 1886 to 1891, the institution which later became Teachers College of Columbia University. In 1890 he was promoted to professor of philosophy and also became dean of the newly created faculty of philosophy, a position he held until his elevation to the acting presidency in 1901.

In 1902 Butler became permanent president and remained in office until his retirement in 1945. The transformation of Columbia into a modern university had already begun under his predecessors, but under Butler's leadership the school experienced a tremendous increase in endowment, buildings, size of student body, and number and quality of faculty. An indefatigable speechmaker, clubman, and fund raiser, Butler strove to expand and deepen the material and intellectual resources of his institution, building it into an international leader in advanced study and research.

An active worker for the Republican party for most of his life, Butler attended national conventions from 1880 on, frequently as a voting delegate. He was chosen as candidate for vice president of the United States in 1912, when the vice president died in office. In the 1920 Republican convention he was nominated by the New York delegation as a candidate for the presidency and received 69 1/2 votes. Although a firm proponent of liquor regulation, he opposed prohibition and fought the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. Many presidents sought his advice on matters of public policy.

Butler became interested in the international peace movement well before World War I, becoming chairman of the American branch of Conciliation Internationale in 1907. He strongly supported the League of Nations. From 1925 to 1945 he headed the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1931, which he shared with Jane Addams. Butler died in New York City on Dec. 7, 1947.

Further Reading

Butler's life is best studied in his autobiography, Across the Busy Years: Recollections and Reflections (2 vols., 1939-1940). Richard Whittemore, Nicholas Murray Butler and Public Education (1970), is a useful study. Butler's career is also recounted in Horace Coon, Columbia: Colossus on the Hudson (1947). A guide to his written work was compiled by Milton Halsey Thomas, Bibliography of Nicholas Murray Butler, 1872-1932 (1934). His work at Columbia is recorded in Edward C. Elliot, ed., The Rise of a University, vol. 2: The University in Action (1937), which is composed of excerpts from Butler's annual reports as president of Columbia, topically arranged.

Additional Sources

Marrin, Albert, Nicholas Murray Butler, Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1976. □

Nicholas Murray Butler 1862–1947, American educator, president of Columbia Univ. (1902–45), b. Elizabeth, N.J., grad. Columbia (B.A., 1882; Ph.D., 1884). Holding a Columbia fellowship, he studied at Paris and Berlin, specializing in philosophy. Beginning in 1885 he was made successively assistant, tutor, and adjunct professor of philosophy at Columbia. He became (1886) president of the Industrial Education Association, reshaped it into what is today Teachers College, Columbia, and was (1889–91) the institution's first president. He was intimately associated with John W. Burgess in the struggle to create a university organization and was largely responsible for the expansion of Columbia College into Columbia Univ. In 1890 he became professor of philosophy and education and dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and in 1901 acting president of Columbia. The next year he formally succeeded Seth Low as president. He instituted the Summer Session, University Extension (now the School of General Studies), the School of Journalism, the Medical Center, and other units that are an integral part of the present-day university.

An advocate of peace through education, Butler helped to establish the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, of which he was a trustee and later president (1925–45). His efforts in behalf of disarmament and international peace won him international prestige, and he shared with Jane Addams the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize. Prominent in national, state, and New York City politics, he remained a regular Republican party member despite differences with its platforms. Though a close friend of Theodore Roosevelt, he refused to join the Progressive movement of 1912, and that year Butler received the Republican electoral votes for vice president after the death of Vice President James S. Sherman, the regularly nominated candidate. He later was the leading Republican advocate of the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment, urged economy in government, and supported local reform movements. He was (1928–41) president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

His books include Education in the United States (1910), The International Mind (1913), The Meaning of Education (rev. ed. 1915), Scholarship and Service (1921), The Faith of a Liberal (1924), The Path to Peace (1930), Looking Forward (1932), Between Two Worlds (1934), and The World Today (1946).

Bibliography: See his autobiography, Across the Busy Years (2 vol., 1939–40); biography by M. Rosenthal (2006); R. Whittemore, Nicholas Murray Butler and Public Education (1970); Bibliography of Nicholas Murray Butler, 1872–1932 (1934).

Butler, Nicholas Murray (1862–1947), became a professor of philosophy at Columbia (1885) and was thereafter constantly identified with the university, serving as president (1902–45). During his administration the institution's scope was enlarged and academic standards raised. He was also prominent in civic affairs and as a leader of the Republican party. His books include The Meaning of Education (1898), True and False Democracy (1907), Education in the United States (1910), A World in Ferment (1917), The Faith of a Liberal (1924), The Path to Peace (1930), and his autobiography, Across the Busy Years (2 vols., 1939–40).