12 Facts About Herbert Schneider

Herbert Wallace Schneider was a German American professor of philosophy and a religious studies scholar long associated with Columbia University.

Herbert Schneider was born in Berea, Ohio, where his father, Fredrick William Herbert Schneider, a German Methodist minister, was a professor at German-Wallace College.

Herbert Schneider early assisted John Erskine in teaching the very first sessions of his revolutionary Great Books course and, as a member of the team led by Harry Carman, developed Columbia College's core curriculum Humanities and Contemporary Civilization courses.

However, his 1946 volume A History of American Philosophy, which was translated into several languages and became a formative text on the subject of American philosophy, has become the work for which Herbert Schneider is most often remembered.

In 1950 Herbert Schneider was a Fulbright Fellow and lectured on American philosophy at the Sorbonne and the Universities of Toulouse, Bordeaux, Aix en Provence, Grenoble, and Marseilles, and, from 1952 to 1957 was an Eranos lecturer in Ascona, Switzerland.

Herbert Schneider held visiting professorships at University of Illinois, University of Washington, University of Georgia, University of Hawaii, Oregon State University and Western Washington State College.

Herbert Schneider traveled and studied extensively in Italy in 1928 and again in 1937 for prolonged research sabbaticals.

In 1954, Herbert Schneider took a leave of absence from Columbia to join UNESCO as head of the Division of International Cultural Cooperation.

Herbert Schneider spent 12 years at Claremont Graduate School in Claremont, California where he helped start the doctoral program in philosophy.

In 1959, Herbert Schneider was appointed Director of the Blaisdell Institute for World Religions at the Claremont Colleges.

Herbert Schneider facilitated scholarly exchanges with universities in the Far East, and organized a number of international conferences.

Herbert Schneider died on October 15,1984, in Claremont, California.