Talk:Nicholas Murray Butler

Untitled

A lot of this entry seems to be copied almost verbatim from the Nobel.org bio. I think it violates copyright - needs to be rewritten. Anyone? Bruxism 02:37, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

The May 11, 2006 NY Review of Books article on Jane Addams mentions Butler as "the authoritarian president of Columbia University who had sacked several of his own professors for opposing World War I"; how does this comment square with his involvement with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace? What were those pesky professors up to? May 2, 2006

Don't see anything contradictory - a lot of people supported WWI and then got all big on international peace in the aftermath. john k 04:24, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

That was the War To End All Wars, was it not? So one could have supported it in the hope that its successful conclusion would lead to permanent peace.Hi There 07:28, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

A tour guide at Columbia said he was responsible for the creation of the SAT. Anyone want to follow up on this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.59.153.157 (talk) 17:15, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

VP in infobox

While being President of Columbia is a reasonably notable position, Butler's selection as a VP candidate ought to be mentioned in the infobox. Is there any policy-based reason for its exclusion? Alansohn (talk) 16:16, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Verified accusations of racism or anti-Semitism

https://www.college.columbia.edu/cct_archive/jan02/jan02_cover_architecture.html See the following quotes from Columbia College Today as proof of Butler's Anti-Semitism "Butler wanted to reduce the number of New Yorkers who attended Columbia College, because New York City students were disproportionately from immigrant families and Jewish. In order to attract larger numbers of young Episcopalian gentlemen, the future leaders of the country, Butler made an effort to nationalize the College, that is, to draw students from outside New York City. Whereas before 1910 the prevailing view in higher education had been that qualified students should not be turned away, Butler helped to develop the notion of "selective admission," whereby a college conveyed its distinction and prestige by turning away qualified students. Application forms were modified in 1919 to inquire about family history; the forms asked not only for the candidate's place of birth, but his religion, his father's place of birth and his father's occupation. The application also required a photograph of the applicant and an interview.

This change in admissions policies produced the desired effect. From 1920 to 1930, that is the first decade of the new admissions policy, the percentage of Columbia students coming from New York City dropped from 54 percent to 23 percent, and what one administrator called "the invasion of the Jewish student" was contained. Dean of the College Herbert E. Hawkes informed Yale's director of admissions in 1930 that "the proportion of Jews in Columbia has been reduced from about 40 percent to 20 percent." But the issue of selectivity, of who should be admitted to Columbia, persisted. In 1933 President Butler instructed Dean Hawkes: "I don't know whether it is at all practicable, but it would be highly judicious if...some way could be found to see to it that individuals of the undesirable type did not get in Columbia College, no matter what their record in the very important matter of As and Bs."

Dormitories enabled Butler to promote his elitist and more homogenous vision of the student body. New Yorkers did not need dormitories or could not afford them; local boys commuted from home. Dormitories were needed for out-of-town students. The creation of a residential College separated the wealthier, often Episcopalian students whom Butler valued more highly from the day students who commuted from the Lower East Side, Brooklyn and places farther removed. Dorms also fostered student interaction and placed more emphasis on social activities. This communal social life tended to focus the undivided loyalty of residential students on the College, unlike commuting students who retained competing urban attachments."

In connection to the quote in the section "Butler and racism": "In population, in language, and in economic life (Hawaii) is distinctly a foreign land. …(Its people) are not and could not be members of the United States of America in any true sense"., I could not find it in the link referenced. TERRITORIES: Knock on the Door. And even if the quote is found somewhere else, I wonder whether the title of the section should be changed, or rather, to add the quote somewhere else. The quote says nothing about race. Merely basing the argument that "Butler was a racist" against Hawaiian people, might be a misinterpretation. The sentiment could be a strong nationalism, rather than racism.

I found the same problem with the following part:

He also aroused controversy. Like many American intellectuals in the 1920s, he was an early admirer of Italian fascist Benito Mussolini and worked to forge cultural relations between Columbia and Italian institutions. The most visible example of this relationship was the Casa Italiana on 117th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, which still stands today. Butler also forged links with universities in Nazi Germany. In 1933, Butler invited Hans Luther, the German ambassador to the U.S., to speak at Columbia in defence of Hitler and the Nazis. Butler rejected student appeals to cancel the invitation, calling the request "illiberal" and citing the need for academic freedom. Later, when the Nazi threat became clearer, Butler vigorously supported the American war effort

— ?

Here there are unsourced accusations and the only link in that paragraph ("DR. BUTLER REFUSES TO BAR NAZI ENVOY; Columbia Head Rejects Plea by Students to Cancel Dr. Luther's Address. CALLS REQUEST ILLIBERAL Stresses Need for Academic Freedom – Club Is Reported Planning Demonstration."), cannot be accessed without buying it. Yet, on Hitler and fascism this is what the real Butler has to say:

...attempts at restriction, compulsion and despotism are all advanced on grounds of public interest and public advantage. It is the common man, so-called, the ordinary man, who is to be protected by them. The fact is, however, that what is being at tempted would have just the opposite effect. It would sentence the individual, however talented, however ambitious or however competent, to remain in the group or class into which he was born. It would stop all true progress and substitute mechanical mass production for individual originality, achievement and high human service......In Italy, Fascism made its appeal when a forceful and dominant personality voiced its doctrines and offered active organization to a people which had become discouraged and, politically speaking, restless and discontented. In Germany, the conditions are distinctly psychopathic. The cruel mistakes which were made when the Treaty of Versailles was dictated and not negotiated, when the foolish paragraph as to the sole war guilt of the Germans was insisted upon, when every sort and kind of discrimination was made against a proud, if defeated, people who had for two full centuries made powerful and permanent contribution to the world s philosophy, the world s literature, the world's science and the world s art, well prepared the way for what has been happening in Germany. When the former Allies insisted upon their domineering attitude even after the Pact of Locarno had been signed and after Germany had joined the League of Nations, and when the forward-facing policies of Stresemann and Briand were blocked at every turn by reactionary and ultranationalistic forces, the path was certainly paved for the success of any leader with a voice and a personality which would appeal to a people s wounded pride and in jured feelings. This is precisely what happened with the advent of Hitler. The real Germany, the true Germany, the historic Germany, is for the moment in eclipse, and we have a nation-wide psychopathic phenomenon with millions listening to preposterous, unhistoric and unscientific doctrines and teachings as to race, as to religion and as to a nations place in the world. Time and time alone can cure such a condition as this....... As a matter of fact, the advocates of the closed shop, while among the most violent denunciators of Fascism, are alert and eager to practice Fascism at the very first opportunity to do so. There is no more reason why a citizen of the United States should be required, in order to find opportunity for employment, to enroll himself as a member of a trade union, than why he should be compelled to join a given political party, a given church, a given Masonic lodge, or a given debating society.

— Liberty, Equality, Fraternity

In connection to the section "Butler and antisemitism", this is what was stated in the article:

Butler had conflicted and complex feelings about Jews. On the one hand, Butler clearly supported policies at Columbia that discriminated against Jews, whether they were applicants for admission, students or potential members of the board of trustees.[1] On the other hand, Butler 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. (Many students were outraged that Butler had accepted Heidelberg's invitation at all. This resulted in a rally outside Butler's home that started with the protesters chanting "Castigate Butler!" and ending with them shouting "Castrate Butler!") As it was, however, Heidelberg had already purged its Jewish professors and adopted Nazi ideology in its curriculum.
Anti-Semitism was common in American education during Butler’s day, and it may be argued that his personal dislike of Jews, and discriminatory policies against them, were no worse than average for that time. Nonetheless, Butler often considered Jews as a whole to be aggressive and vulgar and for many years of his presidency, Columbia had a strict quota limiting the number of Jews who could attend. In 1928, the Board of Trustees authorized the creation of “Seth Low Junior College” in Brooklyn as a way to deal with the number of Jewish (and Italian) applicants. If Columbia College, the university’s prestigious undergraduate school, had already admitted its modest quota of Jews for the year, other Jewish applicants would be shunted to Seth Low. Among Seth Low's alumni were Boston Celtics coach Red Auerbach and noted science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, who wrote of how he ended up at Seth Low.[2] When Seth Low folded in 1938, its remaining students were absorbed into Columbia's undergraduate population as students in the University Extension program; as such, they were only eligible to earn a Bachelor of Science degree rather than a Bachelor of Arts. Asimov graduated in 1939 with a Bachelor of Science.
In 1928, the Chief Judge of the New York State Court of Appeals (later U.S. Supreme Court Justice) Benjamin Cardozo (an alumnus of Columbia College and Columbia Law School) was appointed to Columbia’s Board of Trustees, the first Jew to serve on the board in 113 years. But when Cardozo resigned in 1932, Butler and the board prevented the election of Adolph S. Ochs, publisher of The New York Times, to the board. Another Jew did not serve on the board until 1944, when Arthur Hays Sulzberger (Columbia College Class of 1913), Ochs's son-in-law, was elected a Life Trustee.[3]
Butler’s attempts to limit Jewish admissions to Columbia[4] are discussed (among other places) in the book Nicholas Miraculous: The Amazing Career of the Redoubtable Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler by Columbia English professor Michael Rosenthal.

The whole argument is based on speculation. I've dared to remove the whole section in view of not even one single sound reference and a great speculative prejudiced writing style which do not quote a single direct statement from the person in question. If something is to be mentioned, let it be mentioned in the correct way. The whole section above had only four links, the first contains nothing; the second [Isaac Asimov, In Memory Yet Green, Doubleday, 1979] is from a book by a science fiction writer and it's missing the page; the third link is dead and there is nothing in the previous sentence directly indicating anti-Semitism, and the four link says: ""There is no evidence that Butler was [anti-Semite]. Although frustated applicants for positions at Columbia blamed their falures on its stiff, forbidding president, an essay in January 1986 issue of Commentary in the late 1930s treats Butler more accurately. Although religious and ethnic prejudices did exist among the Columbia faculty, Butler himself did nothing to encourage them." In view of this, there is nothing historical to sustain such a speculative section. --Goose friend (talk) 06:17, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm amazed that all these problems have been in the article since 2011. It such a shame to blame somebody who worked for peace and toleration!, It's such a shame to blame somebody so uglily and deceitfully! To demonstrate that Nicholas Murray Butler was NOT anti-Semite whatsoever, but on the contrary, a CRITIC of prejudice against Jews, I would like to quote from his own words, from Liberty, equality, fraternity: essays and addresses on the problems of today and tomorrow (1942), C. Scribner's Sons, p. 209-212. This will cast out ANY doubt:

we have, to our amazement, religious and racial persecution. We are told in some of these countries given over to the so-called New Order the oldest order that history records! that not only may they not have freedom of religion, but no religion at all; their churches must be closed, if necessary burned, because loyalty to a form of faith is at war with loyalty to the ruling dictator. It involves possible, almost certain, contradiction, and therefore this form of loyalty to religious faith or principle or to a ruling group must be forbidden in the interest of the dictatorship itself.
That has taken a form which is perfectly amazing, even in countries where religion had been free for two hundred or three hundred years, and it has staggered men and women all over the world.
We also see racial persecution, quite extraordinary in its extent and in its bitterness. Sometimes it is combined with religious persecution, sometimes it is apart from that. It is of vital importance that American youth seeking a liberal education should hold themselves above and out of reach of all that sort of thing. In this country we have had in recent years, and we have now, in extraordinary fashion, racial persecution combined with religious persecution. The Ku Klux Klan persecution of members of the Catholic Church has lost a great deal of its vigor, but it still exists among certain classes of the community. The violence which attached to it, for example, in the presidential campaign of 1928, when one of the candidates for the presidency was a member of the Roman Catholic Church, will not soon be forgotten by those of us who were so appalled by it. But it has lost a great deal of its force, and it is sincerely to be hoped that it will depart and never return to our American life.
The anti-Semitic persecution is different. That has had not a world-wide, but a many-nationed basis for a long time. It has not been serious until recently in France, and it has not been serious in Great Britain. It has become of the utmost violence in Italy and in Germany under the present dictatorships.
When you remember how few Jews there are in Italy and how relatively few there are in Germany, one must wonder at the violence and the bitterness of this persecution. The number of Jews in Italy is only a small fraction of those in the city of New York, while there are in the city of New York six times as many Jews as there were in the German Reich when the last war ended and possibly more than four times as many as there are there now. Yet the persecution, personal, physical, family, financial, goes on, openly and secretly, in a way that is perfectly appalling. To my great astonishment, this anti-Semitic persecution has been violently and publicly revived in this country within the last few weeks or months, and it is as discreditable to us that this should have happened as anything that we can imagine.
Jews differ among themselves just as do Spaniards or Italians or Canadians or Americans. There are some who belong to one party, some who belong to another some whp hold one point of view, some who hold a point of view that is contradictory. The notion that all who belong to that race or profess that faith are of one mind in everything that relates to their public relationships is a grotesque departure from fact. But if you can play upon an excited public emotion by the use of these terms and by the insinuation that the entire Hebrew population is engaged, let us say as we have been told from the platform recently in trying to get this nation into war, such statements, although absolutely contradictory to every well-known fact, will, if repeated long enough, be believed and acted upon by a certain number of our unthinking population.
We cannot protest too vigorously and too strongly against that sort of thing. It may be the Ku Klux Klan persecuting the Catholics, it may be the anti-Semites persecuting the Jews: but persecution on racial or religious ground has absolutely no place in a nation given over to liberty and which calls itself a democracy.
Let me remind you that you have come into a college which is very proud of the outstanding Jews who have been carried upon its rolls in years past. At the close of the eighteenth century one of its most distinguished and useful Trustees was the truly great Rabbi Seixas, who, by the way., was the first rabbi to preach in English in a Hebrew synagogue. He played a very large part in the intellectual life of New York, and he played a very effective part in the guidance and development of old Columbia College. We then had Doctor Joseph, also at the close of that century, a student of medicine, who devoted himself to trying to protect the public from the great yellow-fever epidemic of 1798, but who, despite his efforts, unfortunately lost his own life in it. Then there was Jonathan Nathan, of the Class of 1827, a fellow classmate of Hamilton Fish, Secretary of State of the United States for eight years. The correspondence between Nathan and Fish, covering every type of interest and public service, is fortunately in the posses sion of this university and is a source of the greatest significance for the history of the United States... We point to these men and we say, when you are called upon to enter upon a racial or a religious persecution, please stop long enough to see what the history of Columbias to say about men of that faith or of that race. It might at any moment occur to some of those who use this mode of approach to human emotion to pass from the Roman Catholic and the Jew and to take up some other form of faith or belief and to circulate the report underground that it was in violent opposition to American ideals and American principles. No, young men, you are living at a time when, being in search of a liberal education, you must keep your eyes open, your heart and head clear, and stop to think. Do not be swept off your feet by phrases or words or tor rential eloquence. Ask, What lies behind it all? What are the observable, the measurable, the justifiable facts? And then upon those facts build your own convictions and shape your own lives.
My hope, my faith is that out of this splendid group gathered here this afternoon, Columbia will recruit an other regiment of young Americans to go out into the world and fight the battle for American principles in the field of intellect, in the field of morals, in the field of public service. May success and happiness attend you each and all.

— Butler, The Outlook for Youth

Shame on he who misrepresented and misconstrued Butler's views! God have mercy! They made him look as something exactly opposite to what he was.--Goose friend (talk) 06:55, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Another quote of Butler:

• Both anti-Semitism and the Ku Klux Klan are an insult to democracy and a contradiction of it. Liberty-Equality-Fraternity (1942)
  --Goose friend (talk) 07:22, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

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Controversy

Seems inaccurate to not, at least, have a section titled "Controversy" in this article. Goose friend dubiously removed the entire section with details about potential antisemitism even though there is much evidence, at least in action, to support the fact that Butler was a man of his day in this regard.

In the least, and especially in these times, this article should have details about Butler's Jewish quota system, the Seth Low Junior College (Predecessor Institutions), and the 1933 Nazi emissary visit. A more accurate article might include details on the related experiences of Herbert Aptheker, Isaac Asimov, Red Auerbach, and Allen Ginsberg.

Edward Le Comte said it best: "Butler’s anti-Semitism 'if it existed, would not be easily detected,' is correct, but not, as he suggests, 'because Butler was so far from coarse.' The distaste for Jews prevalent in the circles in which Butler moved was discernible, genteel as it might be. It was after all the era when Morris Raphael Cohen could be turned down for a Yale appointment because 'he didn’t know how to wear a dinner jacket.'"

Irony abounds in Goose friend pronouncement of a "prejudiced writing style," and, to me, the most searing poetic irony lies in the article's single use of the word "Jew" in Ginsberg's scrawled: "Fuck the Jews."

If it is Goose friend's intention to make America great again by whitewashing history, they are in good company on Wikipedia and it will take much work to undo the damage now and to future generations.

Here are some other good references to the point:

https://www.columbiaspectator.com/the-eye/2017/10/03/nicholas-murray-butler-versus-antifa/
http://www.columbia-current.org/seth_low_junior_college.html
http://www.wikicu.com/Seth_Low_Junior_College
http://spectatorarchive.library.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/columbia?a=d&d=cs19280403-01.2.7
https://www.nytimes.com/1936/03/05/archives/seth-low-college-to-be-abandoned-brooklyn-unit-of-columbia-facing.html
https://books.google.com/books/about/Seth_Low_Junior_College_of_Columbia_Univ.html?id=dqMStwAACAAJ
https://books.google.com/books?id=1u0sPzMEwOUC&pg=PA376&lpg=PA376&dq=seth+low+junior+college&source=bl&ots=y3gNF-Yj3u&sig=QSFGjA9Rg-mn4CBJj-ipNpVzUJ8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiE_-eQ3uLbAhUJITQIHTJoBtA4ChDoAQg1MAI#v=onepage&q=seth%20low%20junior%20college&f=false
http://www.wikicu.com/Nicholas_Murray_Butler
http://magazine.columbia.edu/reviews/spring-2010/hear-no-evil
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/butler-at-columbia/
https://www.columbiaspectator.com/eye/2016/04/27/man-myth-library-nicholas-murray-butler/
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/22/books/review/an-empty-robe.html
https://cup.columbia.edu/book/nicholas-miraculous/9780231174213
http://www.liquisearch.com/nicholas_murray_butler/butler_and_anti-semitism
http://sheldonkirshner.com/u-s-universities-and-the-rise-of-nazism-in-germany/
https://books.google.com/books?id=SVA0389HG-UC&pg=PA60&lpg=PA60&dq=nicholas+murray+butler+anti+semitic&source=bl&ots=aFMbHtfmid&sig=YCoMWMVdnEhRom6QMBLy_R4CrPQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjP8PSX4eLbAhXKIDQIHQpYAFw4FBDoAQg0MAU#v=onepage&q=nicholas%20murray%20butler%20anti%20semitic&f=false
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_University_School_of_General_Studies#Defunct_predecessors

Joel S Bateman (talk) 18:18, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

This deep concern is important, clearly stated, well defined, and apparently wholly ignored. I'm going to add a brief sentence to the Intro, hopefully compliant with WP:NPOV and other guidelines. Left Central (talk) 05:55, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

OK, here's the sentence I just crafted for the end of the Intro: "However, Butler's anti-semitism in the management of enrollment at Columbia and his sympathy for fascism and Nazism have led to reconsideration of the full spectrum of his work.[citation needed]" It's important for me to note that in WP universe the huge preponderance of my occasional edits (not quite 2K in total) are simply copy edits. I am not qualified to attempt an incorporation of Joel S Bateman's concerns as a new section on anti-semitism tied to the remaining existing section on fascism & Nazism. Such expansion is clearly warranted for Encyclopedic accuracy. Thanks for your consideration; these are difficult topics. Left Central (talk) 06:21, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

References