1940s > People
Marjorie Hope Nicolson
An English professor at Smith College from 1929 to 1941, Nicolson was the author of several acclaimed works on scientific themes in literature, including Voyages to the Moon (1948). Nicolson was in line to become Smith's first female president when Columbia, facing personnel shortages, hired her away to serve as chair of the English and Comparative Literature Department. She continued to serve in that capacity through 1961.
On September 24, 1942, Nicolson delivered a rousing speech at Columbia's opening convocation, in which she defended liberal arts instruction against the encroachment of wartime demands. "Today more certainly than at any time in the past a University must be a place of light. It must strive to keep aflame the light of reason ... continue to carry on the flame of truth which it has inherited from the past."
Harry Carman
After the death of Dean Herbert Hawkes in 1943, long-time CC instructor and historian Harry Carman became Dean of the College.
The draft syllabus on display reflects Carman's concern that students become acquainted with the intertwined material and ideological factors driving the conflict of World War II. Alas, such innovation would have to wait until the war's end. Or, as the author scribbled at the top of the proposed syllabus: "This is 'on ice' now, ready any time."
Virginia Gildersleeve
Virginia Gildersleeve, President of Barnard College from 1917 to 1947, was the only woman delegate to the conference in San Francisco that drafted the charter creating the United Nations. Here she is pictured at the conference shaking hands with U.S. President Harry Truman in April 1945.
