Robert Maynard Hutchins

Robert Maynard Hutchins was one of the most noted educators of the twentieth century. The son of a New England clergyman and university president, Hutchins became the Yale Law School's youngest dean ever at age 28. At 31 he was named president of the University of Chicago, where his ideas about education were both lauded and condemned, but never ignored. While still at the University he became chairman of the board of editors of the [i]Encyclopaedia Brittanica[/i] and also editor of the Great Books series, his brainchild. After leaving U of C he became an associate director of the Ford Foundation, and later the president of an offshoot of the Foundation, the Fund for the Republic. Hutchins' beliefs concerning civil liberties and the rights of man drew attacks from Sen. Joseph McCarthy and Congressional investigating committees, but the Fund was one of the few institutions to squarely confront McCarthyism on moral ground during the 1950s. In 1959 he founded the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, the mission of which was "to identify and clarify the basic issues of our time and widen the circles of discussion about them."