Nicholas Murray Butler

Early life and education

Butler, great-grandson of Morgan John Rhys, was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, to Mary Butler and manufacturing worker Henry Butler. He enrolled in Columbia College (later Columbia University) and joined the Peithologian Society. He earned his bachelor's degree in 1882, his master's degree in 1883, and his doctorate in 1884. Butler's academic and other achievements led Theodore Roosevelt to call him "Nicholas Miraculous". In 1885, Butler studied in Paris and Berlin and became a lifelong friend of future Secretary of State Elihu Root. Through Root he also met Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. In the fall of 1885, Butler joined the staff of Columbia's philosophy department.

In 1887, he co-founded with Grace Hoadley Dodge, and became president of, the New York School for the Training of Teachers, which later affiliated with Columbia University and was renamed Teachers College, Columbia University, and from which a co-educational experimental and developmental unit became Horace Mann School. From 1890 to 1891, Butler was a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Throughout the 1890s, Butler served on the New Jersey Board of Education and helped form the College Entrance Examination Board. During the 1890s Butler edited The Great Educators book series for Charles Scribner's Sons.

Presidency of Columbia University

In 1901, Butler became acting president of Columbia University and, in 1902, formally became president. Among the many dignitaries in attendance at his investiture was President Roosevelt. Butler was president of Columbia for 43 years, the longest tenure in the university's history, retiring in 1945. As president, Butler carried out a major expansion of the campus, adding many new buildings, schools, and departments. These additions included Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, the first academic medical center in the world.

In 1919, Butler amended the admissions process to Columbia in order to limit the number of Jewish students; it became the first American institution of higher learning to establish a quota on the number of Jews admitted. Butler's policy reduced the number of students hailing from New York City from 54% to 23% stemming from what was called at the time "the invasion of the Jewish student". This is one of the reasons why Butler has been called an anti-semite.

In September 1931, Butler told the freshman class at Columbia that totalitarian systems produced "men of far greater intelligence, far stronger character, and far more courage than the system of elections."

In 1937, he was admitted as an honorary member of the New York Society of the Cincinnati.

In 1941, the Pulitzer Prize fiction jury selected Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. The Pulitzer Board initially agreed with that judgment, but Butler, ex officio head of the Pulitzer board, found the novel offensive and persuaded the board to reverse its determination, so that no novel received the prize that year. Hemingway didn't receive his Pulitzer (for The Old Man and the Sea) until 1952, after Butler's death.

During his lifetime, Columbia named its philosophy library for him; after he died, its main academic library, previously known as South Hall, was rechristened Butler Library. A faculty apartment building on 119th Street and Morningside Drive was also renamed in Butler's honor, as was a major prize in philosophy.

An in-depth look at Butler's time at Columbia University can be found in The Goose-Step: A Study of American Education by Upton Sinclair.

Political activity

Butler was a delegate to each Republican National Convention from 1888 to 1936; when Vice President James S. Sherman died six days before the 1912 United States presidential election, Butler was designated to receive the electoral votes that Sherman would have received: the Republican ticket won only 8 electoral votes from Utah and Vermont, finishing third behind the Democrats and the Progressives. Butler tried to secure the 1916 Republican presidential nomination for Elihu Root. Butler also sought the nomination for himself in 1920, without success.

Butler believed that Prohibition was a mistake, with negative effects on the country. He was active in the successful effort for Repeal Prohibition in 1933.

He credited John W. Burgess along with Alexander Hamilton for providing the philosophical basis of his Republican principles.

In June 1936, Butler traveled to the Carnegie Endowment Peace Conference in London where, at the meeting, fundamental problems of money and finance were explored.

Attitude towards Fascism and Nazism

According to historian Stephen H. Norwood, Butler failed to "grasp the nature and implications of Nazism... influenced both by his antisemitism, privately expressed, and his economic conservatism and hostility to trade unionism." Butler was a longtime admirer of Benito Mussolini. He compared the Italian Fascist leader to Oliver Cromwell and, in the 1920s, he noted "the stupendous improvement which Fascism has brought".

In November 1933, months after the Nazi book burnings began, he welcomed Hans Luther, the German ambassador to the United States, to Columbia and refused to appear with a notable German dissident when the latter visited the university. In 1936, Butler permanently expelled student Robert Burke—the class president of the class of 1938—for leading an anti-Nazi protest on campus. Butler was criticized for his "remarkable silence" and complicity towards Hitler's regime until the late 1930s.Stephen H. Norwood, "The Expulsion of Robert Burke: Suppressing Campus Anti-Nazi Protest in the 1930s". Journal for the Study of Antisemitism 4:1 (2012): 89-114. Butler only unambiguously condemned Nazi Germany after Kristallnacht.

Internationalist

From 1907 to 1912, Butler was the chair of the Lake Mohonk Conference on International Arbitration. Butler was also instrumental in persuading Andrew Carnegie to provide the initial $10 million funding for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Butler became head of international education and communication, founded the European branch of the Endowment headquartered in Paris, and was President of the Endowment from 1925 to 1945. For his work in this field, he received the Nobel Peace Prize for 1931 (shared with Jane Addams) "[For his promotion] of the Kellogg-Briand pact" and for his work as the "leader of the more establishment-oriented part of the American peace movement".

In December 1916, Butler, Roosevelt and other philanthropists, including Scottish-born industrialist John C. Moffat, William Astor Chanler, Joseph Choate, Clarence Mackay, George von Lengerke Meyer, and John Grier Hibben, purchased the Château de Chavaniac, birthplace of the Marquis de Lafayette in Auvergne, to serve as a headquarters for the French Heroes Lafayette Memorial Fund, which was managed by Chanler's ex-wife, Beatrice Ashley Chanler.

Butler was President of the Pilgrims Society, which promotes Anglo-American friendship. He served as President of the Pilgrims from 1928 to 1946. Butler was president of The American Academy of Arts and Letters from 1928 to 1941 and was an early member of the academy.

Personal life

Butler married Susanna Edwards Schuyler (1863–1903) in 1887 and had one daughter from that marriage. Susanna was the daughter of Jacob Rutsen Schuyler (1816–1887) and Susannah Haigh Edwards (born 1830). His wife died in 1903 and he married again in 1907 to Kate La Montagne, granddaughter of New York property developer Thomas E. Davis.

In 1940, Butler completed his autobiography with the publication of the second volume of Across the Busy Years.

Butler became almost completely blind in 1945 at age 83. He resigned from the posts he held and died two years later. He is interred at Cedar Lawn Cemetery, in Paterson, New Jersey.

Butler was not universally liked. In 1939, a former student of Butler, Rolfe Humphries, published in the pages of Poetry an effort titled "Draft Ode for a Phi Beta Kappa Occasion" that followed a classical format of unrhymed blank verse in iambic pentameter with one classical reference per line. The first letters of each line of the resulting acrostic spelled out the message: "Nicholas Murray Butler is a horses ass". Upon discovering the "hidden" message, the irate editors ran a formal apology. Randolph Bourne lampooned Butler as "Alexander Macintosh Butcher" in "One of our Conquerors", a 1915 essay he published in The New Republic.

Butler wrote and spoke voluminously on all manner of subjects ranging from education to world peace. Although marked by erudition and great learning, his work tended toward the portentous and overblown. In The American Mercury, the critic Dorothy Dunbar Bromley referred to Butler's pronouncements as "those interminable miasmas of guff".

Honors

• Knight Grand Commander in the Order of the Redeemer.
• Order of Saint Sava.
• Grand Cross of the Order of the White Lion on 1926-07-14.
• Grand cordon of the Order of Leopold.
• Knight Grand cross in the Order of the Crown of Italy.
• Commander in the Order of the Red Eagle.
• Knight Grand cross in the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus.
• Doctor honoris causa - University of Szeged (Hungary) in 1931.
• Elected member of the American Philosophical Society in 1938.

Works

Notes

References

1. Pringle, Henry F.. (October 17, 1928). "Publicist or Politician? A Portrait of Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler". The Outlook.
2. (November 2025). "TimesMachine: Saturday December 24, 1927 - NYTimes.com". The New York Times.
3. (November 2025). "Dr. Butler's Christmas Message.". The New York Times.
4. (November 2025). "DR. BUTLER URGES FAITH.; Christmas Message Asks Courage in Face of World Ills.". The New York Times.
5. (November 2025). "DR. BUTLER'S HOLIDAY CARD; His Christmas Message Defines Five Fundamental Human Institutions.". The New York Times.
6. "Morgan J. Rhees papers, 1794–1968".
7. "A Tribute to Grace Hoadley Dodge".
8. "A Long Tradition".
9. Thomas Davidson, ''[https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/40552/pg40552-images.html Aristotle and Ancient Educational Ideals]'', New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1892, title page. Retrieved February 8, 2024.
10. Ballon, Hillary. (January 2002). "The Architecture of Columbia: Educational Visions in Conflict".
11. (January 1, 1990). "High Status Track, The: Studies of Elite Schools and Stratification". State University of New York Press.
12. Schlesinger, Arthur Meier. (1957). "The Crisis of the Old Order, 1919-1933". [[Houghton Mifflin Harcourt]].
13. "Honorary Members".
14. McDowell, Edwin. (May 11, 1984). "Publishing: Pulitzer Controversies". [[The New York Times]].
15. Shapiro, Gary. (December 29, 2015). "Ask Alma's Owl: Butler for President".
16. "DRY LAW CHANGE NEAR, SAYS BUTLER; Thinks Senate Debate Initiates Movement Which Must End in Prohibition Reform. CALLS FAILURE COLOSSAL Columbia Head Holds Attempt Was Immoral -- Contends the Tide Has Now Turned. DRY LAW CHANGE NEAR, SAYS BUTLER". The New York Times.
17. Butler, Nicholas Murray. (1939). "Across the busy years: recollections and reflections". [[Charles Scribner's Sons]].
18. "DR. BUTLER URGES ECONOMIC PARLEY; Calls for World Meeting on Fundamental Problems of Money and Finance. SEES DANGER OF WARFARE Borrowing Power of Many Nations May Be Exhausted Next Year, He Declares.". The New York Times.
19. Wills, Matthew. (December 10, 2021). "Silence in the Face of Intellectual Conflagration".
20. Elon, Amos. (February 23, 2006). "A Shrine to Mussolini".
21. (September 20, 1943). "FOREIGN NEWS, ITALY: Axis (1936-1943)". Time Magazine.
22. Ibrahim, Nur (March 16, 2025). "Yes, Columbia University Expelled Student for Leading Anti-Nazi Demonstration in 1936." Snopes. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/columbia-university-expelled-student-anti-nazi-demonstration/. Retrieved March 19, 2025.
23. Wills, Matthew. (December 10, 2021). "Silence in the Face of Intellectual Conflagration".
24. "Nicholas Murray Butler Versus Antifa".
25. "Lafayette Memorial".
26. (January 6, 1917). "Americans buy Lafayette's Home". [[The Sacred Heart Review]].
27. (1920). "Harper's Pictorial Library of the World War". [[Harper (publisher).
28. (August 4, 1918). "Americans Aid War Refugees in Paris". [[The Philadelphia Inquirer]].
29. Seabury, Paul. (May 29, 1966). "The Establishment Game: Nicholas Murray Butler Rides Again".
30. "DR. BUTLER RESIGNS POST; To Be Succeeded by J.W. Davis as Pilgrims' President". The New York Times.
31. "Nicholas Murray Butler".
32. (January 5, 2024). "World Almanac and Encyclopedia 1919". The Press Publishing Co. (The New York World).
33. (March 6, 1907). "Dr Butler wed Miss La Montagne". [[The New York Times]].
34. Butler, Nicholas Murray. (1940). "Across the Busy Years: Recollections and Reflections". [[Charles Scribner's Sons]].
35. "The Nobel Peace Prize 1931".
36. Gamaliel. "Nicholas Murray Butler".
37. Juvenis. (September 4, 1915). "One of Our Conquerors".
38. Bromley, Dorothy Dunbar. (1935). "Nicholas Murray Butler—Portrait of a Reactionary".
39. Coon, Horace. (1990). "Money to Burn: Great American Foundations and Their Money". [[Longmans Green]].
40. "Československý řád Bílého lva 1923–1990".
41. "APS Member History".