1946

Richard Hofstadter (1916-1970) joined the department of history in 1946, after earning his doctorate from Columbia. Hofstadter’s scholarship focused on American political culture. Considered a leading public figure and intellectual in the postwar decades, he was awarded the Pulitzer prize twice. Hofstadter was critical of the student demonstrations that broke out on campus in 1968 and defended Columbia as “a center of free inquiry and criticism – a thing not to be sacrificed for anything else.” 

Read Hofstadter’s 1963 essay “The Revolution in Higher Education.”