Robert Maynard Hutchins

Robert Maynard Hutchins 1899-1977, American educator, b. Brooklyn, N.Y., studied at Oberlin College, grad. Yale, 1921, taught in the Yale law school (1925-27), and served as dean (1927-29). He became president of the Univ. of Chicago in 1929 at the age of 30 and held that position until 1945; he served as chancellor there from 1945 until 1951. After 1943 he was chairman of the board of editors for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. An enthusiast for adult education, he received in 1946 a year's leave of absence to promote the "great books" program. He was associate director of the Ford Foundation from 1951 to 1954, when he became president of the Fund for the Republic, and later founder and president of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara, Calif. From 1969 to 1974 he was chairman of the board. His books include The Higher Learning in America (1936), Education for Freedom (1943), The Conflict in Education in a Democratic Society (1953), and The Learning Society (1968).

Bibliography: See biography by H. S. Ashmore (1989).

Hutchins, Robert Maynard (1899–1977), graduated from Yale (1921) and was successively secretary of the university, professor in the law school (1927), and dean of the law school (1928). As president of the University of Chicago (1929–45) and its chancellor (1945–51), he reorganized the administration and abolished compulsory courses and the conventional grading system. In The Higher Learning in America (1936), No Friendly Voice (1936), Speaking of Education (1940), Education for Freedom (1943), and Morals, Religion, and Higher Education (1950) he stated his theory that education devoted to “the accumulation of observed facts” of science is anti‐intellectual. He advocated the study of basic texts in the history of ideas, and concentration on basic abstractions, through “rational analysis which is logically prior to the empirical observations involved.”