1950s > People
Dwight D. Eisenhower
After a three-year search, Columbia finally found a successor to President Nicholas Murray Butler, the longest serving president in the university's history (43 years). In 1948 General Dwight D. Eisenhower was named Columbia University's thirteenth president.
Lionel Trilling
Lionel Trilling was perhaps the best-known and most respected cultural critic of the 1950s. He entered the College as a freshman in 1921 and was a student in John Erskine's General Honors class. Trilling taught the course as a graduate student and later became a legendary teacher of its descendants, the Colloquium on Important Books and Humanities A.
"Red-ucators" at Columbia
The "Red Scare" of the late 1940s and the early 1950s affected many individuals and educational institutions – including Columbia. The National Council for American Education published this dossier of 87 suspected communists on campus as part of its campaign "to rid the schools and colleges of Socialistic and un-American teachings and teachers." John Dewey and much of the College faculty appear on the list, along with a wide variety of affiliations that are, according to the authors, "communist fronts."
