1895

James Harvey Robinson (1863-1936), appointed professor of European history in 1895. Robinson taught courses on the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the Reformation and the French Revolution. His class “The History of the Intellectual Class of Europe” was one of the most popular at the University in the first two decades of the twentieth century. In his pioneering essay “The New Allies in History” he called for the use of social science—psychology, anthropology and sociology, in the study of history. In 1917 he resigned from Columbia following disputes over academic freedom.