Growing Pains at a New Columbia

Abstract

Among the undergraduates entering Columbia in 1909—the year Erskine bounced back to campus with the buoyant optimism of a prodigal son—was a short, stooped student with a misshapen head that testified to a botched forceps delivery. Four years older than freshmen who arrived straight from high school, he was quickly recognized as brilliant, eccentric, and brutally candid. Within only a few months, everyone on campus seemed to know or know of Randolph Bourne. By his second year, he was the editor of the Columbia Monthly literary journal, a post that allowed him ample opportunities to attack the ideas and practices of his primary campus nemesis, the youthful Professor Erskine. Although immediately and exceedingly popular with his younger students, Erskine struck Bourne as “a very superficial philosopher” who earned his “cordial dislike.”¹

Bourne may have been singularly sharp tongued and personal in his attacks, but he was not alone in his vocal disgruntlement concerning faculty and curriculum. A busy activist and gifted essayist, he represented a growing army of Progressive-era students, at Columbia and elsewhere, with little patience for the discussion of timeworn ethical and moral meanings in literature or other disciplines. Their preference was for teaching and learning that could shine the sober light of day on current realities—social issues, political predicaments, and contemporary injustices.