29 Facts About Goldwin Smith

Goldwin Smith was a British-born academic and historian who was active in both Great Britain and North America.

Goldwin Smith is the namesake of Goldwin Smith Hall at Cornell University, and was outspoken regarding his often controversial political views.

Goldwin Smith was a supporter of the Union during the American Civil War and a critic of imperialism.

Goldwin Smith was opposed to the Irish Home Rule movement and women's suffrage, along with holding Anglo-Saxonist and antisemitic views.

Goldwin Smith was educated at Eton College and Magdalen College, Oxford, and after a brilliant undergraduate career he was elected to a fellowship at University College, Oxford.

Goldwin Smith threw his energy into the cause of university reform with another fellow of University College, Arthur Penrhyn Stanley.

Goldwin Smith was public with his pro-Northern sympathies during the American Civil War, notably in a speech at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester in April 1863 and his Letter to a Whig Member of the Southern Independence Association the following year.

Goldwin Smith was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1865.

Goldwin Smith had resigned his chair at Oxford in 1866 in order to attend to his father, who had suffered permanent injury in a railway accident.

Goldwin Smith held the professorship of English and Constitutional History in the Department of History at Cornell University from 1868 to 1872.

Goldwin Smith lived at Cascadilla Hall among the students, and was much beloved by them.

In 1871 Goldwin Smith moved to Toronto to live with relatives, but retained an honorary professorship at Cornell and returned to campus frequently to lecture.

Goldwin Smith bequeathed the bulk of his estate to the University in his will.

Goldwin Smith told White that admitting women would cause Cornell to "sink at once from the rank of a University to that of an Oberlin or a high school" and that all "hopes of future greatness" would be lost by admitting women.

On June 19,1906, Goldwin Smith Hall was dedicated, at the time Cornell's largest building and its first building dedicated to the humanities, as well as the first home to the College of Arts and Sciences.

Goldwin Smith personally laid the cornerstone for the building in October 1904 and attended the 1906 dedication.

In Toronto, Goldwin Smith edited the Canadian Monthly, and subsequently founded the Week and the Bystander, and where he spent the rest of his life living in The Grange manor.

In 1893, Goldwin Smith was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society.

Goldwin Smith died at his residence in Toronto, The Grange.

Goldwin Smith continued to take an active interest in English politics.

Goldwin Smith published sympathetic monographs on William Cowper and Jane Austen, and attempted verse in Bay Leaves and Specimens of Greek Tragedy.

Goldwin Smith thought that Canada was destined by geography to become part of the United States.

Goldwin Smith identified as an anti-imperialist, describing himself as "anti-Imperialistic to the core".

Goldwin Smith denigrated brit milah, a Jewish ritual of circumcision, as a "barborous rite", and proposed either culturally assimilating Jews or deporting them to Palestine as a solution to the "Jewish problem".

Goldwin Smith proposed in other writings that Jews and Arabs were of the same race.

Goldwin Smith believed that Islamic oppression of non-Muslims was for economic factors.

Goldwin Smith was strongly opposed to the women's suffrage movement, both in the United Kingdom and in the United States.

Goldwin Smith is credited with the quote "Above all nations is humanity," an inscription that was engraved in a stone bench he offered to Cornell in May 1871.

The bench sits in front of Goldwin Smith Hall, named in his honour.