University of Chicago Library Guide to the Robert Maynard Hutchins Papers 1884-2000 © 2014 University of Chicago Library Table of Contents Descriptive Summary 4 Information on Use 4 Access 4 Restrictions on Use 4 Citation 4 Biographical Note 5 Scope Note 7 Related Resources 9 Subject Headings 10 INVENTORY 11 Series I: Personal 11 Subseries 1: General 11 Subseries 2: Biographical 13 Series II: Correspondence 15 Series III: Subject Files 208 Series IV: Yale University 212 Series V: University of Chicago 213 Subseries 1: General 213 Subseries 2: Publicity 218 Series VI: Encyclopædia Britannica 228 Subseries 1: General 228 Subseries 2: Correspondence 235 Subseries 3: Board of Editors 241 Subseries 4: Content Development 244 Series VII: Commission on Freedom of the Press 252 Series VIII: Committee to Frame a World Constitution 254 Series IX: Ford Foundation, Fund for the Republic, and Center for Study of Democratic256 Institutions Subseries 1: Administrative 256 Subseries 2: Programs and Events 261 Series X: Writings 267 Subseries 1: General 269 Subseries 2: Books 270 Subseries 3: Articles 275 Sub-subseries 1: Articles 275 Sub-subseries 2: Correspondence 294 Subseries 4: Speeches 297 Subseries 5: Engagements 339 Series XI: Honors and Awards 421 Series XII: Audiovisual 424 Series XIII: Books 436 Series XIV: Oversize 439 Series XV: Restricted 440 Subseries 1: Financial and Personnel Information 441 Subseries 2: Student Information 441 Descriptive Summary Identifier ICU.SPCL.HUTCHINSRM Title Hutchins, Robert Maynard. Papers Date 1884-2000 Size 238.5 linear feet (465 boxes) Repository Special Collections Research Center University of Chicago Library 1100 East 57th Street Chicago, Illinois 60637 U.S.A. Abstract Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899-1977) was a leader in education reform, dean of the Yale Law School, president and chancellor of the University of Chicago (1929-1951), and an executive at the Commission on Freedom of the Press, the Committee to Frame a World Constitution, Encyclopædia Britannica, the Ford Foundation, the Fund for the Republic, and the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. The collection includes material pertaining to Hutchins' research, writing, and speaking; material relevant to his professional activities; correspondence; subject files; personal ephemera; honors and awards; annotated books; and photographs and audio recordings. Materials date between 1884 and 2000, with the bulk of the material dating between 1921 and 1977. Information on Use Access 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. Restrictions on Use Series XII, Audiovisual, does not include an access copy for the audio recordings. Researchers will need to consult with staff before requesting these items. Citation When quoting material from this collection, the preferred citation is: Hutchins, Robert Maynard. Papers, [Box #, Folder #], Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library. 4 Biographical Note 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 5 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,