Mark Van Doren - Career

Career

Van Doren joined the Columbia University faculty in 1920, having been preceded by his brother the noted historian Carl Van Doren. Mark Van Doren went on to become one of Columbia's greatest teachers and a "legendary classroom presence"; he became a full professor in 1942, and taught English until 1959, at which point he became Professor Emeritus until his death in 1972 His students at Columbia included the poets and writers John Berryman, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Louis Simpson, Richard Howard, Lionel Trilling (later a colleague), Robert Lax, Anthony Robinson, as well as the Japanologist and interpreter of Japanese literature Donald Keene, author and activist Whittaker Chambers, writer and Trappist monk Thomas Merton, Walter B Pitkin Jr and poet-critic John Hollander.

"I have always had the greatest respect for students. There is nothing I hate more than condescension—the attitude that they are inferior to you. I always assume they have good minds."

He twice served on the staff of The Nation during the 1920s and 1930s. He was a member of the Society for the Prevention of World War III.

Van Doren helped Ginsberg avoid jail time in June 1949 by testifying on his behalf when Ginsberg was arrested as an accessory to crimes carried out by Herbert Huncke and others, and was an important influence on Merton, both in Merton's conversion to Catholicism and Merton's poetry. He was a strong advocate of liberal education, and wrote the book, The Liberal Education (1943), which helped promote the influential "great books" movement. Starting 1941, he also did Invitation to Learning, a CBS radio show, where as one of the experts he discussed great literature.

He was made a Fellow in American Letters of the Library of Congress and also remained president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.