Robert Hutchins was born in Brooklyn, NY on January 17, 1899, the son of a Presbyterian minister. A prodigy in every sense, Hutchins first attended Oberlin College, but left to serve as an ambulance driver in World War I. After the war, he attended Yale University, graduating in Summa Cum Laude with an AB degree in 1921. After one year of teaching at a preparatory school in New York, Hutchins returned to Yale. working in a minor administrative post, and simultaneously pursuing a law degree. Within a few years, he was Dean of the Yale Law School.
In 1929, at the age of 30, Hutchins was appointed President of the University of Chicago, one of the premier private universities in the United States. Hutchins was to stay at Chicago, first as President, and then as Chancellor, for the next 25 years. Hutchins, along with his kindred spirit Mortimer Adler, was a passionate advocate for a broad, liberal, great books
style undergraduate education, and an equally passionate opponent of the overly-specialized, vocational, ad-hoc style of education that was becoming the norm in American universities.
After retiring from the University of Chicago, Hutchins was director of the Ford Foundation, where he was deeply involved in the civil rights movement and the fight against the McCarthy era communist witch hunts. After his tenure at Ford, Hutchins founded and directed the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara,California. He died in 1977.
Hutchins was one of the most important educators of the twentieth century. His books include