This post provides a case demonstrating that the foreign language requirement for getting a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Chicago was indeed a constraint during the first decade of the 20th century. At the time a reading knowledge of French and German was required for admission to Ph.D. degree candidacy. In the following transcribed letter (June 2, 1909) to President Harry Pratt Judson, the Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Literature, sociology professor Albion Woodbury Small, recounted his encounter with a political economy graduate student, Robert Russ Kern, whose self-confessed lack of French reading skills had disqualified him from admission to his planned Ph.D. examination in economics and psychology.
It turns out that Kern never received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago or in fact anywhere else. This was reason enough to don my historian’s gumshoes and find out where Robert Russ Kern came from and how his post-Chicago career turned out. But first I’ll put into the record the letter from the University of Chicago archives that caught my attention.
Fun fact: in 1909 one apparently wrote “ ‘phone” with a leading apostrophe.
Fun with old photos: this is the first post at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror that provides a colorised black and white image from yore.
[Handwritten: June 2-09]
The President,
My dear Chief:I do not remember that I have ever had a more painful scene in the Graduate Office than occurred this morning with Mr. Kern. In a word Mr. Kern was expecting to take his examination for the Doctor’s degree in Economics and Psychology tomorrow. At the last meeting of the Graduate Faculty it was voted that he be allowed to take the examination, provided the Examiner and the Dean were meanwhile assured that he had complied substantially with our requirement. Yesterday Mr. Williamson reported to me that Mr. Kern confessed to him that he had forgotten all the French he ever knew, but asked him to certify to his knowledge of French. I thereupon notified Mr. Kern that as he could not satisfy our French requirement his admission to the examination was automatically closed. This morning he came to my office in a very intense state of mind, to express it within limits, and as I summed up for him his demands it was that the University should substitute its judgment for his of what was a reasonable requirement for a Doctor’s degree. He stated that for years it had been notorious that men had been passed by the French Department without knowing any more French than he does. When I asked him if he was willing to present evidence to support that statement he declined on the ground that it would make trouble for men still in the University. I told him that it was beyond my power to do anything if I wanted to in the face of the plain statement of fact about his knowledge of French. I told him further, however, that if he would put in writing any statement which he was willing to lay before the President I would put it in your hands today. I told him however that I saw no way in which you could feel called upon to interfere with the regular operation of our rules, but that he would hear from you if you saw any way to deal more favorably with his case.
I have talked over the ‘phone since the interview with Mr. Laughlin and he agrees with me that it would be a demoralizing variation from our precedents to withdraw from the position the rules required me to take. I have therefore sent the following notice to the members of the examining committee “Unless you receive word from the President reversing this decision, Mr. Kern’s examination will not be held Thursday, June 3rd.”Sincerely,
[signed] Small
Source: University of Chicago Archives. Office of the President. Harper, Judson, and Burton Administrations. Records. Box 38. Folder „Dean of Graduate School, 1909-20. 38/12 Pres.“
The Life and Career
of Robert Russ Kern
Life Data
Robert Russ Kern was born in Kansas City, Missouri on April 9, 1878 (date from draft registration) and died April 19, 1958 in Washington, D.C.
From his obituary in the April 20, 1958 edition of the Sunday Star (Washington, D.C.), p. 34 we also learn the following professional and personal facts:
Phi Beta Kappa at the University of Missouri.
Surviving wife, Jeanette G. Kern, and daughter, Jean Russ Kern.
He retired from George Washington University in 1934.
About his wife: Jeanette Kern, née Geschickter, graduated in 1912 with an A.B. from GWU. They married June 10, 1912 in the District of Columbia.
University of Missouri Years
(A.B. 1905)
Rollins Junior scholarship winner 1903-1904. Kern “made a higher average grade since his entrance to the university than any other student in the last ten years. He is said to be the best student of philosophy in the history of the university.”
Kansas City Star, June 2, 1904, p. 5.
Some uncertainty whether he would be the valedictorian of his class because he was confined in Parker Memorial Hospital for three weeks and unable to take final examinations. St. Joseph News Press (June 5, 1905), p. 5.
Valedictorian of the academic department of the University of Missouri. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 8, 1905, p. 10.
Cornell University Year
Graduate student at Cornell in 1907.
Source: Cornell Alumni Directory (May 15, 1922) p. 175
University of Chicago Years
Robert Russ Kern, graduate student in the department of political economy
Fellow (1907-08)
Assistant in Political Economy (1908-09)
Source: Twenty-five years of the Department of Political Economy (1916).
From the fifth list of dissertations in progress:
Robert Russ Kern, University of Chicago. The formation of the prices of consumers’ goods (probable date of completion, 1908). The Economic Bulletin, vol I, Nr. 1 (April 1908), p. 73.
From the sixth list of dissertations in progress
Robert Russ Kern, University of Chicago. Industrial finance (probably date of completion, 1909). The Economic Bulletin, vol II, Nr. 1 (April 1909), p. 21.
George Washington University Years
Instructor of Economics (listed as “Dr. (sic) Kern”) in 1909.
George Washington University Bulletin (1909), p. 13 “Robert R. Kern, Ph.D (sic)…..Instructor in Economics
Dr. (sic) Kern graduated at the University of Missouri, taught in Columbia University (Note: I have not verified his Columbia University affiliation) and Cornell University and came to this University from the Chicago University.”
Listed in George Washington University Bulletin as Professor of Economics and Sociology only with a A.B. (1920)
Professor of Urban Sociology, GWU.
Publications
The Supervision of the Social Order. The American Journal of Sociology, 1918/1919
Part I. Part II.
The Super City. The World‘s Most Efficient and Beautiful City. Washington, D.C., 1924. By Robert Russ Kern, Professor of Economics and Sociology in the George Washington University.
Image Source: University of Missouri, The MU Yearbook Savitar (1905), p. 23. Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.