Insistent Change: Columbia’s Core Curriculum at 100

John H. Randall and the Making of the Modern Mind

Randall graduated from Columbia College in 1918, earned his Ph.D. in 1922 and was a professor in the philosophy department from 1925 until his retirement in 1967. Randall began teaching CC as a graduate student and also took on the task of writing its first comprehensive textbook. The Making of the Modern Mind (1926) proved popular among students and with the public at large and remained an assigned CC text until the early 1940s. In the work, Randall reconstructs the thought, beliefs and political-economic realities of Western societies at key turning points from the Middle Ages through the 1920s. In keeping with the progressive "New History" of his mentors Charles Beard and James Harvey Robinson, Randall argued that any who would attempt to understand contemporary institutions must first grasp their deep cultural and material roots.