Links:

    -WIKIPEDIA: John Erskine (educator)
    -ENTRY: John Erskine (EBSCO)
    -COLLECTION: John Erskine papers, 1890-1951 (Columbia University Libraries)
    -ENTRY: John Erskine American musician and author (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
    -ENTRY: John Erskine (Columbia 250)
    -WIKIPEDIA: The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent
    -ENTRY: The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent & Other Essays by John Erskine (GoodReads)
    -The Core Curriculum (Columbia College)
    -FILMOGRAPHY: John Erskine (IMDB)
    -COLLECTION: John Erskine Papers (Anherst College)
    -INDEX: JOhn Erskine (Project Gutenberg)
    -INDEX: John Erskine (LibriVox)
    -INDEX: John Erskine (Internet Archive)(
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    -OBIT: JOHN ERSKINE DIES IN HIS HOME AT 71; : English Literature Professor at Columbia in 1909-37 Wrote 'Helen of Troy' Novel AUTHOR OF THIRTY BOOKS Former Juilliard School Head Also Known as Lecturer-- Translated Foreign Plays Emphasis on Great Books Made Famous by a Book Wrote Something Every Day (NY Times, June 3, 1951)

His tenure at Columbia came at the time when the university was a focal point of an American cultural development in which music, literature and teaching, itself, were important and exciting. Mr. Erskine helped to generate much of this excitement, not only because of the emphasis he placed on the importance of reading great books but also because he transmitted to his students a zest for the art of life. In his autobiography, "My Life As a Teacher,” published in 1948, he said his aim had not been to produce great scholars but to show the students that so-called dead literature was very much alive.

Among the junior instructors he chose to assist him in section work at Columbia in 1920 were Mark Van Doren, Raymond Weaver, Irwin Edman, Mortimer Adler, Rexford Tugwell and Clifton Fadiman, then virtually unknown.

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    -ESSAY: The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent (John Erskine, ca. 1915)
    -ETEXT: The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent And Other Essays (John Erskine) [PDF]
    -ETEXT: The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent And Other Essays (John Erskine) [Internet Archive][PDF]
    -AUDIO: The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent and Other Essays by John Erskine (LibriVox Audiobooks, YouTube)
    -AUDIO: The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent and Other Essays by John Erskine (1879 - 1951) (LibriVox)
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    -FOREWORD: to The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent (Mahzarin R. Banajii)[PDF]

To be intelligent means many things of course. For the present purpose, I will underscore that intelligence is knowing how to weigh the evidence that flies in the face of steadfast assumptions. It means to know when causality can be inferred and not, to know when the weight of correlational evidence must be taken seriously, to know that a replication is worth much more than a single demonstration, to know that when new methods divulge strange truths about us and our brethren, it may be the theory that has to go. The moral obligation to be intelligent requires that we keep abreast of discoveries that require old views to be bagged and put out on the curb for recycling - every week.

    -ESSAY: The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent – Part I (Mahzarin Banaji, April 5, 2007, The Situationist)
    -ESSAY: The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent – Part II (Mahzarin Banaji, April 16, 2007, The Situationist)
    -ESSAY: A proper education involves reading great books: John Erskine on reading great books, from his book titled My Life as a Teacher (Samantha Hedges, PhD, Oct 27, 2023)
    -ESSAY: Thinking Citizen Blog — The Great Books Movement — John Erskine, Robert Hutchins, Mortimer Adler (John Muresianu, Jun 11, 2021)
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    -REVIEW: of The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent (Michael Wayne Smith, Mar 8, 2023, Medium)
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    -REVIEW: of The Private Life of Helen of Troy by John Erskine (Jonathan Bogart)