Borton-Mosely Lectures
Funded by an anonymous donor, this program is named after two members of the founding generation of the Russian and East Asian Institutes at Columbia University. Hugh Borton, 1903-1995, and Philip Mosely, 1905-1972, were remarkable individuals, who compiled outstanding records of scholarship, teaching, and public service. Borton began his lifelong involvement with Japan in the late 1920s, studying at Tokyo Imperial University in the 1930s and joining the Columbia faculty in 1937. From 1930-1932, Philip Mosely spent two grueling years in Leningrad researching his Harvard dissertation. He joined the Columbia faculty in 1940. During WWII both served in the State Department. Philip Mosely specialized in planning for post-war Europe, also serving as an advisor at major Allied war- and postwar conferences. Borton engaged in post-war planning for Japan, playing a significant role in the preservation of the Japanese Emperor, then widely regarded as a war criminal. Borton argued that deposing him would have made governing an occupied Japan an impossible challenge. Borton returned to Columbia in 1948 as Associate Director of the newly established East Asian Institute (now the Weatherhead East Asian Institute), serving as Director from 1954-57. Under his leadership, the Institute became a major center for research and teaching. Mosely was a co-founder in 1946 of Columbia’s Russian Institute (now the Harriman Institute), vigorously promoting Soviet studies and serving as Director from 1951-1955. From 1955-63 he served as Director of Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, but returned to Columbia in 1963, as Director of the European Institute, and as Adlai Stevenson Professor of International Relations. Both Borton and Mosely stood up in defense of academic freedom during the McCarthy years.
Image: The New York Public Library. “Chinese pottery bottle design” New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed November 19, 2024. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e1-0123-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
