John Erskine
- See also Wikipedia's article about "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 had the brazen audacity to suggest that the classics be read in translation instead of the original Latin or Greek.
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.
In 1900, Erskine 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 won the Butler Medal in 1919.
