“Hutchins was a man of ideas, and his effectiveness in propagating them was reflected in the public record he compiled in the course of a long career as a legal scholar, political philosopher, educational reformer, and civil libertarian….In his twenties, as the precocious dean of the Yale Law School, he became a prominent figure in academic circles; in his thirties, as president of the University of Chicago, he was recognized as a media star a generation before that dubious term was coined. This kind of celebrity was essential to his lifelong effort to rally support for the changes he sought to effect in the nation’s educational structure.”

Group O