The Columbia University 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.
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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.
In addition, before 1880, the Master of Arts degree was awarded in the style of Cambridge and Oxford, that is three years after graduation and without further examination. This changed after June 1880, when the trustees implemented an examination for the award of the Master of Arts degree.
The Ph.D was first proposed as a degree in 1873 to be awarded under the auspices of the School of Mines. It was first awarded in 1877. The ability of granting the PhD later expanded to the Faculty of Political Science. 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. 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.
Notable alumni
Economists
Kenneth Arrow – Ph.D., 1951
Arthur Burns – Ph.D., 1934
Milton Friedman – Ph.D., 1946
Christina Paxson – PhD 1987 - 19th President, Brown University
Historians
Nina Ansary – Ph.D 2013
Jacques Barzun – Ph.D. 1932
Charles A. Beard – Ph.D. 1904
Dominique Collon - Ph.D 1971
Lawrence Cremin – M.A. 1947, Ph.D. 1949
Richard Hofstadter – Ph.D. 1942
Bruce Cumings – Ph.D. 1975
Stanley Payne — Ph.D. 1959
Howard Zinn — 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
Joseph Campbell – literary scholar and philosopher, M.A., 1927
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
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
John Diederich Haseman - zoologist, geologist and explorer, Ph.D. 1911
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
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
Jerome J. Pollitt – art historian, Ph.D. 1963
Meyer Schapiro – art historian, Ph.D. 1929
Other fields
Peter Buck – co-founder of Subway restaurant chain, Ph.D.
Wm. Theodore de Bary – American Sinologist and scholar of East Asian philosophy, Ph.D. 1953
Herman Hollerith – inventor, Ph.D. 1890
Pankaj Jain - Professor of Philosophy, Religious Studies, Film Studies, and Sustainability
Jose Franklin Jurado-Rodriguez – Moneylaunderer for the Cali Cartel kingpin Jose Santacruz Londono
Sam Levenson – comedian, 1938
Ge Li – Chinese American billionaire, co-founder of WuXi AppTec, Ph.D. 1994
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
Sol M. Stroock – lawyer, M.A. 1892
Leonard Tow – Chairman and CEO of Citizens Communications, Ph.D. 1960
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