Hutchins, Robert Maynard. Papers, 1884-2000

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Education

Great Books and General Education

Manhattan Project and Allied Scientists

University of Chicago - Founding and Early History

The collection is open for research, with the exception of material in Series XV. This series contains restricted personnel, financial, and student material. Materials in Series XV, Subseries 1 are restricted for fifty years from date of record creation. Subseries 1 as a whole will be fully open in 2027. Materials in Series XV, Subseries 2 are restricted for eighty years from date of record creation. Subseries 2 as a whole will be fully open in 2055.

Series XII, Audiovisual, does not include an access copy for the audio recordings. Researchers will need to consult with staff before requesting these items.

When quoting material from this collection, the preferred citation is: Hutchins, Robert Maynard. Papers, [Box #, Folder #], Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

At the age of thirty, Robert Maynard Hutchins was inaugurated as the fifth President of the University of Chicago. From 1929 until his retirement from the University in 1951, Hutchins remained the chief executive officer of the University.

Robert Maynard Hutchins was born on January 17, 1899 in Brooklyn, New York, to Anna Laura Murch and William James Hutchins, a Presbyterian minister, professor of theology, and eventual President of Berea College (Kentucky). Hutchins enrolled at Oberlin (where his father taught) in 1915 but discontinued his undergraduate studies in 1917 to serve with the Ambulance Corps of the U. S. Army. For his conduct, he was awarded the Croce di Guerra by the Italian government. He resumed his education at Yale in 1919, graduating in 1921. Following graduation, Hutchins married artist and writer Maude Phelps McVeigh. The couple moved to upstate New York where Hutchins taught at the Lake Placid School until 1923. Together, they had three children. The marriage ended in divorce in 1948. Hutchins was remarried in 1949 to Vesta Sutton Orlick, and adopted her daughter.

Hutchins' career at Yale was nothing less than meteoric. He graduated from the Yale Law School in 1925 while also serving as Secretary of the University since 1923. He joined the faculty of the Law School in 1925, becoming a full professor in 1927. Hutchins' vitality and intellectual agility led to his appointment first as Acting Dean (1927) and then as Dean (1928) of the Law School. While at Yale, he was instrumental in creating the Institute of Human Relations, an interdisciplinary center for the legal, medical, and sociological study of contemporary social problems.

Hutchins' youth made his appointment as President of the University of Chicago something of a surprise, but according to Harold Swift, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, the search committee was concerned with finding an individual with the personality and the intellectual drive to fill the position. Hutchins' gregarious nature and his commitment to curriculum reform, evident at Yale, seemed to make him an ideal candidate to provide the kind of leadership and vision that the University had not had since President William Rainey Harper.

The initial years of Hutchins' administration were dramatic ones. He accepted and implemented plans for a general reorganization of the University that had been in the works since the administration of Ernest D. Burton (1923-25). These reforms were intended to simplify the administrative structure of the University, to promote interdisciplinary work among the faculty, and to redefine the undergraduate curriculum. The so-called "New Plan" or "Chicago Plan" created four graduate divisions—Humanities, Social Sciences, Physical Sciences, and Biological Sciences—and established a consolidated College as a separate division of the University. Additionally, Hutchins eliminated the University's varsity football program. Hutchins' major interest, however, was in the nature and goals of undergraduate education in general and the College in particular. Curricular reforms, with which his name has become more or less synonymous, emphasized the role of the College in providing general education grounded in philosophy and philosophical analysis. Impatient with the increasingly fine division of academic labor and the intensification of research specialization, Hutchins became an outspoken advocate of the value of general education. He lectured tirelessly on the meaning of college and seemed to relish his self-assumed role as a leading American educator.

Hutchins' candor and glibness, his self-confidence and (to some) his dogmatism were mixed blessings. The Walgreen investigations (1935) into possible subversive activities on the part of certain faculty at the University put Hutchins in the public eye as an eloquent defender of academic freedom against the claims of naive xenophobes. On the other hand, his style and opinions antagonized parts of the faculty who came to resent what they interpreted as arrogance and a sort of "party line" within the University. Their fears of Hutchins' power and their perception of the declining role of faculty governance at the University stood behind the Senate Memorial (1944) to the Board of Trustees. Protesting some of Hutchins' assertions about the role of the University in contemporary society, the Memorial coincided with widespread administrative reforms designed at least in part to more clearly define the respective roles of the President and the University Senate in the making of educational policy. Hutchins was appointed Chancellor of the University in 1945.

As a public figure, Hutchins championed a variety of issues and causes. Although he opposed America's entry into World War II, he cooperated with the government in the establishment of the Metallurgical Laboratory (1942) on campus as part of the Manhattan Project. Following the war, Hutchins was in the forefront of groups seeking to control the destructive potential of nuclear energy and to evaluate the broader implications of scientific research. He was sympathetic to the idea of a single world order (which he could trace to Thomas Aquinas) and in 1945 established, at the request of G. A. Borgese and Richard McKeon, the Committee to Frame a World Constitution. One year earlier he had been appointed chairman of the Commission on the Freedom of the Press. Funded by grants from Time, Inc. and the Encyclopædia Britannica (of which Hutchins had been a director since 1943), the Commission inquired into the nature, function, duties, and responsibilities of the press in America. It was particularly sensitive to the constraints on a free press in the contemporary world.

Controversial and opinionated, Hutchins served as President (and then as Chancellor) of the University longer than any other individual. He retired from the University in 1951 to assume an associate directorship of the Ford Foundation.

Hutchins tenure at the Ford Foundation underwent several metamorphoses. In 1954 he was appointed director of the Foundation's semi-independent fund, the Fund for the Republic. He reorganized the Fund in 1959 as the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, and moved its headquarters from New York City to Santa Barbara, California. He served as its chairman until 1974.

From 1943 to 1974, Hutchins was also chairman of the Board of Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica and a director for Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Hutchins spoke and published frequently. He authored numerous books including No Friendly Voice (1936), The Higher Learning in America (1936), Education for Freedom (1943), The University of Utopia (1953), Some Observations on American Education (1956), and The Learning Society (1968).

Hutchins died in Santa Barbara, California on May 14, 1977.

The collection is organized into fifteen series:

I. Personal

II. Correspondence

III. Subject Files

IV. Yale University

V. University of Chicago

VI. Encyclopedia Britannica

VII. Commission on Freedom of the Press

VIII. Committee to Frame a World Constitution

IX. Ford Foundation, Fund for the Republic, and Center for Study of Democratic Institutions

X. Writings

XI. Honors and Awards

XII. Audiovisual

XIII. Books

XIV. Oversize

XV. Restricted

I. Personal: Contains material pertinent to Hutchins' early life - such as notebooks from his studies at Yale University - and to his death - such as memorials and obituaries. The series also contains interviews with and writings about Hutchins.

II. Correspondence: Contains the personal and professional correspondence of Robert Hutchins. Hutchins corresponded with an impressive number of 20th-century luminaries; persons represented here include Saul Alinsky, Steve Allen, Pearl S. Buck, Albert Einstein, T. S. Eliot, Hubert Humphrey, Oscar Hammerstein II, Aldous and Laura Huxley, Charles and Anne Lindbergh, Benjamin E. Mays, Thurgood Marshall, Edward R. Murrow, Paul Newman, the Rockefeller family, Earl Warren, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Of particular interest to researchers is extensive correspondence with William O. Douglas, Adlai Stevenson, and Thornton Wilder.

III. Subject Files: Consists of general subject files, arranged alphabetically by topic. Of particular note are files on the Atomic Energy Control Conference of 1945 and Hutchins' file on his negotiations with President Franklin D. Roosevelt about leading the National Recovery Administration in 1934.

IV. Yale University: Includes documents pertaining to Hutchins' employment at the University. Researchers seeking materials relevant to his education at Yale should consult Series I, Personal.

V. University of Chicago: Contains material pertaining to Hutchins' time at the University of Chicago including material pertaining to Hutchins' inauguration as President of the University of Chicago, correspondence with various journals published by the University of Chicago Press, Board of Trustees materials, press releases, and clippings files. Researchers interested in Hutchins' career at the University of Chicago should also consult the records of the University of Chicago Office of the President.

VI. Encyclopædia Britannica: Consists of material pertaining to Robert Maynard Hutchins' work as chairman of the Board of Editors of the Encyclopædia Britannica, from 1943 to 1974 and as director for Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Additionally, he was editor in chief of the 54-volume Great Books of the Western World (1952) and coeditor, from 1961 to 1977, with Mortimer J. Adler, of The Great Ideas Today. The bulk of the material in this series dates from the late 1950s to the early 1970s.

VII. Commission on Freedom of the Press: Contains correspondence, memoranda, reports, meeting materials, and clippings pertaining to Hutchins' chairmanship of the Commission on Freedom of the Press.

VIII. Committee to Frame a World Constitution: Includes correspondence, memoranda, reports, drafts, clippings, and other ephemera relevant to Hutchins' founding of and work for the Committee to Frame a World Constitution.

IX. Ford Foundation, Fund for the Republic, and Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions: Consists of a small amount of material pertaining to Hutchins' association with the Ford Foundation and the Fund for the Republic. This is followed by general administrative records for the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, as well as material for Center papers, discussions, conferences, and projects.

X. Writings: Contains material related to the development of Hutchins' published and unpublished written work. This includes notes, outlines, manuscripts and typescripts, correspondence, publicity, and reviews. The series is subdivided by type of writing: 1) General (bibliographic information, clippings, and notes); 2) Books; 3) Articles; 4) Speeches; and 5) Engagements. Subseries 5, Engagements contains speeches and other public talks (introductions, radio addresses, etc.), arranged in chronological order. This material was maintained separately by Hutchins from that in Subseries 4, Speeches.

XI. Honors and Awards: Includes certificates, diplomas, memorials, medals, medallions, and ephemera pertaining to awards and honors received by Hutchins.

XII. Audiovisual: Contains photographs, cassette tapes, audio reel-to-reel tapes, and one 33 1/3 record. The photographs are mainly of Hutchins at meetings and events. The audio recordings include speeches given by Hutchins, as well as interviews. Access copies for audio recordings in this series are not included. Researchers will need to consult with staff before requesting these items.

XIII. Books: Contains annotated books from Hutchins' personal library and loose-leaf notes found enclosed.

XIV. Oversize: Contains oversize materials including honors and awards, photographs, posters and broadsides, an issue of the Saturday Evening Post, and academic regalia.

XV. Restricted: Includes restricted personnel, financial, and student material. Materials in Subseries 1 are restricted for fifty years from date of record creation. Subseries 1 as a whole will be fully open in 2027. Materials in Subseries 2 are restricted for eighty years from date of record creation. Subseries 2 as a whole will be fully open in 2055.

The following related resources are located in the Department of Special Collections:

• Names
  • Hutchins, Robert M. (Robert Maynard), 1899-1977
  • Adler, Mortimer Jerome, 1902-2001
  • Benton, William, 1900-1973
  • Nef, John U. (John Ulric), 1899-1988
  • University of Chicago. Office of the President
  • Yale Law School
  • Commission on Freedom of the Press
  • Committee to Frame a World Constitution
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica
  • Ford Foundation
  • Fund for the Republic
  • Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions
• Subject
  • Education
  • Educational Change
  • Freedom of the press