John Erskine
John Erskine CC 1900, AM 1901, PhD 1903, LittD (hon. caus.) 1929 was an English professor at Columbia from 1909 to 1937 and was the Father of the Core Curriculum. He was among the first Columbia educators to have the brazen audacity to suggest that the classics be read in translation instead of the original Latin or Greek.
As a student, Erskine co-wrote the 1900 Varsity Show, The Governer's Vrouw, with poet Melville Cane. That same year, he was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, and his signature is among the first one can see in the records of the Columbia chapter of the national honors organization.
He delivered a speech entitled "The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent" at Amherst, before World War I, which is believed to embody the philosophy behind the formation of the Great Books seminar which became Lit Hum.
Under the presidency of Nicholas Murray Butler, when the independence of Columbia College was in doubt, Erskine led a committee of the Class of 1900 proposing that a new campus be built specifically for the college someone along the Hudson River, near Baker Field. Despite his attempts to wrest control of the college from the anti-collegiate Butler, Erskine nevertheless won the Butler Medal in 1919.
