Louis Zukofsky
Louis Zukofsky CC '?? MA '24 was the co-founder and chief theorist of the Objectivist poetry movement. This style was influenced by Zukofsky's brief flirtation and affiliation with Marxism, brought on by his close association with Columbia classmate and future Soviet spy Whittaker Chambers.
Zukofsky could have attended City College for free, but his parents opted to sacrifice in order to send him to Columbia. While at the college, he joined a literary society and published works in literary magazines. During his time at the university, Zukofsky studied with, and under, many of the greatest Columbians. His classmates included not only Chambers but Clifton Fadiman, Mortimer Adler, Lionel Trilling, Meyer Schapiro, and John Gassner. When he left Columbia with a masters' degree in 1924, his professors had included Mark Van Doren, John Dewey, and John Erskine, although Zukofsky was decidedly not a fan of the latter's "Great Books" philosophy, which would evolve into the Core Curriculum.
Zukofsky's MA thesis was entitled "Henry Adams: A Criticism in Autobiography".
