Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Columbia Graduate School
of Arts and Sciences

Type	Private
Established	1880
Dean	Carlos J. Alonso
Students	~6,000 students
Location	New York , NY , U.S.
Campus	Urban
Website	gsas.columbia.edu

The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (also known as GSAS) is the graduate school of Columbia University. Founded in 1880, GSAS is responsible for most of Columbia's graduate degree programs in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. The school offers MA and PhD degrees in approximately 78 disciplines.

History[]

GSAS began to take shape in the late 19th century, when Columbia, until then a primarily undergraduate institution with a few professional attachments, began to establish graduate faculties in several fields: Political Science (1880), Philosophy (1890), and Pure Science (1892). The graduate faculties, notably, were open to women at a time when many other Columbia schools were not; Columbia College did not become a coeducational institution until 1983. The first Ph.D. awarded by Columbia was conferred in 1882; the first woman to receive one did so in 1886.

The increasing professionalization of the university brought with it an emphasis on the graduate schools, as presidents such as Seth Low and Nicholas Murray Butler sought to emulate the success of German universities during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Indeed, in the effort to produce as many graduate degree-holders as possible, attempts were made to streamline undergraduate life and center academic life in the graduate-focused departments. Such efforts led to resistance among Columbia College administrators and undergraduates, arguably one of the contributing factors in the 1968 protests. Nevertheless, graduate research has flourished at Columbia as a result, and the university has been among the top producers of PhDs in the United States from the inception of the graduate disciplines. In the early 1990s, GSAS and Columbia College faculty were all absorbed into a consolidated Faculty of Arts and Sciences, with familiar complaints among undergraduates and their advocates.

List of academic departments[]

Notable alumni[]

Economists[]

• Kenneth Arrow – economist, Ph.D., 1951
• Arthur Burns – economist, Ph.D., 1934
• Milton Friedman – economist, Ph.D., 1946
• Christina Paxson – economist; Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University; 19th President, Brown University, PhD 1987

Historians[]

• Nina Ansary – historian, Ph.D 2013
• Jacques Barzun – historian, Ph.D. 1932
• Charles A. Beard – historian, Ph.D. 1904
• Dominique Collon - historian, Ph.D 1971
• Lawrence Cremin – historian, M.A. 1947, Ph.D. 1949
• Richard Hofstadter – historian, Ph.D. 1942
• Bruce Cumings – historian, Ph.D. 1975
• Stanley Payne—historian, Ph.D. 1959
• Howard Zinn—historian, Ph.D. 1958

Literature[]

• Jacob M. Appel – writer and bioethicist, M.A., 2000
• John Ashbery – poet, 1951
• Isaac Asimov – science fiction writer, M.A. 1941
• Paul Auster – writer, M.A., 1970
• Randolph Bourne – antiwar essayist, M.A. 1913
• Rachel Blau DuPlessis – literary critic, M.A. 1964, Ph.D. 1970
• Teju Cole - novelist and critic, M.Phil. art history, 2003
• John Eisenhower - military historian and son of Dwight D. Eisenhower, M.A., 1950
• Jason Epstein – writer, M.A., 1950
• John Erskine – literary scholar, Ph.D. 1903
• James Goldman – writer, 1952
• William Goldman – screenwriter, 1956
• Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal – screenwriter
• David G. Hartwell - critic and editor, Ph.D. 1973
• Carolyn Heilbrun – writer, M.A. 1951, Ph.D. 1959
• Joseph Heller – writer, 1949
• Zora Neale Hurston – writer, 1935
• Alfred Kazin – literary critic, 1958
• Kenneth Koch – poet, M.A. 1953, Ph.D. 1959
• Joseph Wood Krutch – writer, M.A. 1916, Ph.D. 1929
• David Lehman – poet, Ph.D. 1978
• Peter Straub – writer, 1966
• Lionel Trilling – literary critic, M.A. 1926, Ph.D. 1938
• Anne Tyler – novelist, 1962
• Mark Van Doren – writer, Ph.D. 1920
• Stark Young – critic and writer, 1902

Philosophers[]

• Mortimer Adler – Ph.D. in psychology, 1928
• Arthur Danto – M.A. 1949, Ph.D. in philosophy, 1952
• Irwin Edman – Ph.D. in philosophy, 1919
• Hu Shih – public intellectual in China, Ph.D. 1917

Natural scientists[]

• Jacqueline Barton – chemist, 1979
• Niles Eldredge – paleontologist, Ph.D. 1969
• Stephen Jay Gould – paleontologist, Ph.D. 1967
• Neil deGrasse Tyson – astrophysicist, author, science communicator, Ph.D. 1991

Performing arts[]

• Kenneth Ascher, DMA – jazz pianist, composer – 1966 CC; 1968 GSAS; 1971 SOA
• Alan Heyman, traditional Korean musicologist and composer, 1959^[2]
• Art Garfunkel – musician, 1967
• Will Geer – actor
• Edward Everett Horton – actor, 1909
• John Kander – composer, 1954
• Bernard Malamud – writer, 1942
• Thomas Merton – Catholic writer, 1939

Social scientists[]

• Ruth Benedict – anthropologist, Ph.D. 1923
• Theos Casimir Bernard – explorer and religionist, M.A. 1936, Ph.D. 1943
• Kenneth B. Clark – educational psychologist, Ph.D. 1940
• Mamie Phipps Clark – educational psychologist, Ph.D. 1943
• Gilberto Freyre — Brazilian sociologist, cultural anthropologist and historian, M.A. 1922
• Robert A. Leonard — linguist, M.A. and M. Phil. 1973, Ph.D 1982
• Margaret Mead — anthropologist, Ph.D. 1929
• Lorine Livingston Pruette — psychologist, Ph.D. 1924

Politicians[]

• B. R. Ambedkar – a founding father of India, M.A. 1915, Ph.D. 1928
• Nicholas Murray Butler – diplomat and President of Columbia University, Ph.D. 1884
• Benjamin Cardozo – jurist, M.A. 1890
• Wellington Koo – Chinese diplomat, Ph.D. 1912
• Robert Moses urban planner, Ph.D. 1914
• Frances Perkins – US Secretary of Labor, M.A. 1910
• Brent Scowcroft – US National Security Advisor, M.A. and Ph.D. in international relations, 1967
• Mark Wyland – California State Senator, M.A. in political science, 1969
• Madeleine Albright - Secretary of State, Ph.D. in public law and governance, 1976

Visual arts[]

• Mary Godfrey – art educator
• Donald Clarence Judd – sculptor, 1961
• Agnes Martin – painter, M.A. 1952
• Meyer Schapiro – art historian, Ph.D. 1929

Other fields[]

• Herman Hollerith – inventor, Ph.D. 1890
• Jose Franklin Jurado-Rodriguez – Moneylaunderer for the Cali Cartel kingpin Jose Santacruz Londono^[3]
• Sam Levenson – comedian, 1938
• John McCaffery – newscaster
• Richard P. Mills – former Commissioner of Education for both Vermont and New York States, M.A. 1967
• Madeleine B. Stern – rare book expert, M.A. 1934
• Judith Rodin – 7th president of the University of Pennsylvania and president of the Rockefeller Foundation, Ph.D. 1970
• James T. Lee - lawyer, banker, real estate developer, and grandfather of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Lee Radziwill, A.M. 1902
• Peter Hildebrand Meienberg – Swiss Benedictine missionary based in East Africa

References[]

External links[]

• GSAS website