A long time before economics graduate degree programs in the United States were to completely abolish requirements for demonstrating a basic competency in some language other than English [e.g. M.I.T. in 1969], there was a battle over the number of ancient languages expected. In this post we have a member of Columbia University’s Faculty of Political Science, Prof. Munroe Smith (legal historian), giving his opinion on the matter to President Low back in 1891.
I have included brief biographical material from an 1899 publication along with the Columbia University newspaper’s report of Smith’s funeral service in 1926.
Fun Fact: Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay and Hewlett Packard and unsuccessful candidate for Governor of California in 2010, happens to be a great-grandaughter of Munroe Smith.
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Letter from Legal Historian Munroe Smith to Columbia President Seth Low
Columbia College,
October 7, 1891
Dear Sir:
In reply to your circular letter of June 12, I have to say that I heartily endorse the plan proposed by the University Council—as far as it goes. I should prefer to see an election permitted in the entrance examinations also between Greek and some equivalent. But I accept the plan of the Council as meeting the immediate necessities of the situation at Columbia.
It is impossible longer to insist on both the ancient languages in our undergraduate curriculum. We have ourselves made it impossible. For the degree of Ph.D., two of our own University faculties already demand a reading knowledge of Latin, French and German. It does not seem possible for the student to acquire this knowledge in the School of Arts as long as he is held to Greek. At least, we constantly find graduate students who are obliged to give up the hope of attaining this degree, unless they are able and willing to go back into undergraduate courses and there make good their linguistic deficiencies. But this seems hardly fair to them.
I am opposed to the proposal to confine the A.B. degree to those who have studied Greek in college. It seems to me a reactionary suggestion. Whatever may have been the case a generation ago. A.B. does not now, in our most progressive and popular colleges, imply any knowledge of Greek. It does not even imply that the bearer has forgotten Greek. Even at Columbia we have broken with the older tradition as regards the higher degree of A.M. We have conferred the degree of A.M. upon men who not only have no Greek, but who have neither Greek nor Latin, or at least have not studied either language within the preceding five years. This I consider too great an innovation. I think we shall best combine healthy progress with sound conservatism by requiring for all academic (non-technical) degrees a good knowledge of one ancient language. But I do not think we can insist on two.
I am opposed to the suggestion that the degree of Ph.B. be conferred in all cases where Greek has not been studied in college, because in the common opinion this is an inferior degree. The distinction proposed casts a slur upon all other liberal studies and unduly exalts the older as opposed to the newer humanities.
Respectfully
[signed]
Munroe Smith
President Seth Low, LL.D.
Source: Columbia University, Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Columbia University Archives. Central Files 1890-. Box 339. Folder: “1.1.19; Smith, Munroe; 5/1891-11/1909”.
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SMITH, Munroe. 1854-[1926]
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y. 1854 educated at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. Amherst College (A.B. 1874), Columbia Law School, and Universities of Berlin, Leipzig and Göttingen (J.U.D 1880); Lecturer and Instructor at Columbia 1880-83; Adjunct Professor and Lecturer 1883-90; Professor 1890-; Managing Editor Political Science Quarterly 1887-92, 1898-99.
MUNROE SMITH, J.U.D., Professor of Roman Law and Comparative Jurisprudence at Columbia, was born in Brooklyn, New York, December 8, 1854, son of Dr. Horatio Southgate and Susan Dwight (Munroe) Smith. His ancestors were English and Scotch settlers in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Maine. Having acquired his preparatory education in the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, he entered Amherst College in 1870 and was graduated in 1874. After a year in post-graduate work at Amherst with Professor John W. Burgess, he spent the next two years (1875-1877) at the Law School of Columbia, and continued his studies in Germany, at the Universities of Berlin, Leipzig and Göttingen, for the three years 1877-1880, taking the degree of Doctor of Civil Law at Göttingen in the latter year. On returning from abroad he became Lecturer on Roman Law and Instructor in History at Columbia, and filled that position for three years. In 1883 he was made Adjunct Professor of History and Lecturer on Roman Law, and after officiating in that capacity for seven years, was in 1890 transferred to the Chair of Roman Law and Comparative Jurisprudence, which he now holds. Professor Smith while filling his Chair with thoroughness and ability, has devoted some measure of his time to literary work, and besides being Managing Editor of the Political Science Quarterly, for several years, has been a contributor to various journals, and to Lalor’s and Johnson’s Encyclopædias. He published in 1898: Bismarck and German Unity, An Historical Outline. He married April 17, 1890 Gertrude Huidekoper, and has one daughter, Gertrude Munroe Smith.
Source: Universities and their Sons, Vol. 2 (1899), pp. 399-400.
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DOCTOR E. M. SMITH TO BE BURIED TODAY
Bryce Professor Emeritus Victim of Pneumonia—Funeral Services from St. Paul’s.
Dr. Edmund Monroe Smith [18]77 L, Bryce Professor Emeritus of European History, died at his home Tuesday, a victim of pneumonia. Professor Smith was a member of the Columbia Faculty since 1880. Funeral services will be held this afternoon at 2 P.M. from St. Paul’s Chapel. Dr. Smith was born in Brooklyn in 1854. He entered Amherst College in the Class of 1874, and after receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree he enrolled in Columbia in the Class of ’77 Law. After graduation from Law School, Doctor Smith went abroad and studied at the University of Göttingen, where he was awarded a J.U.D. He also received the honorary degrees of Doctor of Law from Columbia, in 1904 and Amherst in 1916, and Doctor of Jurisprudence from Louvain University in 1909.
Author of Many Books.
From 1891 to 1922, during his forty-five years of teaching at Columbia, Doctor Smith was Professor of Roman Law and Comparative Jurisprudence. He was also a lecturer on Roman Law at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. Doctor Smith was the author of numerous books, among which are, “Bismark and German Unity”, “Out of Their Own Mouths” and “Militarism and Statecraft” which was published during the World War. He edited several publications, one of the most important of which is, “The Political Science Quarterly”.
Dr. Smith is survived by his wife, formerly Miss Gertrude Huidkoper of Philadelphia, and a daughter, Mrs. Cushing Goodhue of Boston. The honorary pallbearers this afternoon will be President Nicholas Murray Butler, Frederick Coudert, Brander Matthews, Judge John Bassett Moore of the Permanent Court at The Hague, George A. Plimpton, Franklin H. Giddings, Lyman Beecher Stowe, Charles D. Havens, Rev. Dr. Willam Adams Brown, George Northrop, Algernoon S. Frissell, Carlton J. Hayes, B. M. Anderson, Howard Lee McBain, Frederick Keppel, Justice Harlan Fiske Stone of the United States Supreme Court, and President John H. Goodnow, of John Hopkins University.
Source: Columbia Daily Spectator, Vol. XLIX, No. 135 (April 15, 1926), p. 1.
Image Source: Universities and their Sons, Vol. 2 (1899), pp. 399-400.