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Harry Pratt Judson

President, Chicago University

Centurion, 1908–1927

Born 20 December 1849 in Jamestown, New York

Died 4 March 1927 in Chicago, Illinois

Buried Oak Woods Cemetery, Chicago, Illinois

Proposed by James Hulme Canfield and Nicholas Murray Butler

Elected 6 June 1908 at age fifty-eight

Century Memorial

The present rather noticeable trend away from the idea that a successful college president must necessarily be a successful individual solicitor of endowments is a confession that the two types of administrative genius are not always compatible, and that if the choice has to be made between them, capacity in the field of education must stand first. Harry Pratt Judson served the University of Chicago best as educator. His sixteen-year presidency of that institution was distinguished less by the enhancement of its financial fortunes than by the co-ordinating and extending of its facilities for instruction. Himself a notable classical and historical scholar, he broadened the scope of the University’s teaching. But he did more by bringing into its curriculum a conservatism which preserved for it the older educational standards, at a time when there seemed to be danger of losing them in the rush after innovating ideas and methods.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1928 Century Association Yearbook