Herbert Edwin Hawkes

Herbert E. Hawkes was one of those Centurions formed by nature to fit perfectly into the ideal of a society of good conversation, salty, humorous and wise. Unfortunately for his fellow members the duties of a busy administrative career at Columbia University, where he was dean of the college, and the responsibilities of many educational commissions (such as the Council of Religion in Higher Education of which he was the directing spirit), made his visits to the Club infrequent. He repeatedly expressed regret concerning that fact to his many friends in our membership. Those who did know him or saw him at the Club will remember him as almost the Platonic image of a traditional dean, kindly, shrewd, alert, a country-looking, youthful alertness on the face of an old and experienced man. In a vast and by tendency amorphous university, he kept the college one by the force of a simple human devotion and good sense about its problems. Under his auspices some experiments in education, now widely imitated, were begun, the course in Contemporary Civilization, and the Humanities course required of all freshmen, the Colloquium on Great Books, the origin of the “great books” idea now so rife in the colleges. A New Englander by birth and education, he retained in thirty-five years’ residence on Morningside Heights the accent, the tang, the integrities of his origin. And in long years of administration he never lost the sense of the ultimate importance of the individual student. He welcomed a freshman’s problems in 1940 as intently as he did in 1917. He left a heritage of affection almost unequalled in this generation at Columbia and a few leading educational practices that will be built upon for a long time.

Geoffrey Parsons
1943 Century Memorials