American educator, born at Elizabeth, NJ, on the 2nd of April 1862. He graduated at Columbia College in 1882, was a graduate fellow in philosophy there from 1882 to 1884, when he took the degree of Ph. D., and then studied for a year in Paris and Berlin. He was an assistant in philosophy at Columbia in 1885–1886, tutor in 1886–1889, adjunct professor of philosophy, ethics and psychology in 1889–1890, becoming full professor in 1890, and dean of the faculty of philosophy in 1890–1902. From 1887 until 1891 he was the first president of the New York college for the training of teachers (later the Teachers’ College of Columbia University), which he had personally planned and organized. In 1891 he founded and afterwards edited the Educational Review, an influential educational magazine. He soon came to be looked upon as one of the foremost authorities on educational matters in America, and in 1894 was elected president of the National Educational Association. He was also a member of the New Jersey state board of education from 1887 to 1895, and was president of the Paterson (NJ) board of education in 1892–1893. In 1901 he succeeded Seth Low as president of Columbia University. Besides editing several series of books, including “The Great Educators” and “The Teachers’ Professional Library,” he published The Meaning of Education (1898), a collection of essays; and two series of addresses, True and False Democracy (1907), and The American as he is (1908). He was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1911. In 1912 he was chairman of the New York State Republican Convention and also a delegate to the Republican National Convention. Vice-President Sherman was renominated but died shortly before the general election, and the Republican electoral votes were cast for Dr. Butler for vice-president. He was, however, overwhelmingly defeated on the ticket with President Taft, Wilson receiving an electoral vote of 435 (40 states), Roosevelt 88 (6 states) and Taft 8 (2 states). On the outbreak of the World War in 1914 he supported the peace policy of Mr. Wilson’s administration as responding, he declared, “to the best wishes and hopes of the whole people.” He disapproved of the organization of the American Legion. In 1916, however, he urged America’s entrance into the war. The same year he was again a delegate to the Republican National Convention, serving as chairman of the Committee on Resolutions. He favoured woman suffrage and was an advocate of the short ballot. At the Republican National Convention in 1920 he received 69 votes for the presidential nomination on the first ballot, the number gradually falling to two on the tenth and last ballot. As an educator President Butler was a bold critic of many contemporary tendencies in American education. He upheld the old theory of mental discipline, and in the face of the widespread vocational movement in schools and colleges remained a steadfast and eloquent defender of liberal education. Under his guidance Columbia University became a cosmopolitan institution, its total registration in 1920 approximating 30,000. He was chairman of the National Committee of the United States for the Restoration of the university of Louvain, destroyed by the Germans in 1914. In 1920 he resigned the editorship of The Educational Review, becoming advisory editor. He was the author of Why Should We Change Our Form of Government (1912); Progress in Politics (1913, a pamphlet); The Meaning of Education (1915, an enlargement of the work published in 1898); A World in Ferment (1917, interpretations of the war for a new world); Is The World Worth Saving (1920); Scholarship and Service (1921). See also “The Revolt of the Unfit.”
