Biography
Haskins was born in Meadville, Pennsylvania. He was a prodigy, fluent in both Latin and Greek while still a young boy, taught by his father. He graduated from Johns Hopkins University at the age of 16, and then studied in Paris and Berlin. He received a Ph.D. in history from Johns Hopkins University and began teaching there before the age of 20. In 1890 he was appointed an instructor at the University of Wisconsin, became a full professor in two years, and from 1892-1902 he held the chair of European history. In 1902 he moved to Harvard University, where he taught until 1931.
Haskins became involved with politics and was a close advisor of US President Woodrow Wilson, whom he had met at Johns Hopkins. When Wilson attended the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 where the Treaty of Versailles was worked out, he brought only three advisors, including one medieval historian Charles Haskins, serving as chief of the Western European division of the American commission.
Haskins was primarily a historian of institutions like medieval universities and governments. His works reflect an optimistic and mostly 20th century liberal view that progressive government, when staffed with the best and brightest a culture has, is the best course for society to take. His histories of the institutions of medieval Europe stress the efficiency and successes of the bureaucratic institutions, which contained implicit analogy to modern nation states.
Haskins's most well known pupil was medieval historian, Joseph Strayer, who went on to teach a large share of American medievalists, many still teaching today.
The Haskins Society, named in his honor, publishes an annual Journal. Its Volume 11 (1998) reconsidered aspects of Haskins' major work seventy years after its publication. From 1920 to 1926, he was also the first chairman of the American Council of Learned Societies, which today has a distinguished lecture series named after him.
His son, George Haskins, was a professor of the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Read more about this topic: Charles Homer Haskins
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