Hugh Hawkins was born in Topeka, KS on September 3, 1929, and raised in El Reno, OK. He received a Bachelor's degree from DePauw University in 1950 and a Ph.D from John Hopkins University in 1954. He served in the U.S. Army, 1954-1956, and taught at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1956-1957. Hawkins began teaching History and American Studies at Amherst College in 1957. He was active in several notable social movements and causes, including academic freedom and anti-McCarthyism, the Civil Rights movement, nuclear disarmament, the anti-war movement (both the Vietnam War and the Gulf War), and LGBT rights.
In 1976 Prof. Hawkins was instrumental in designing the first-year introduction to Liberal Studies curriculum at Amherst College and helped build both the History and American Studies departments. He is a distinguished scholar of American higher education, the American South, and of cultural and intellectual history, and in particular is the author of several notable publications on the history of higher education in the United States. These include The Emerging University and Industrial America (1972); Between Harvard and America: The Educational Leadership of Charles W. Eliot (1972); Banding Together: The Rise of National Associations in American Higher Education, 1887-1950 (1992); and Pioneer: A History of the Johns Hopkins University, 1874-1889 (1960 and 2002). In 2006 he published Railwayman's Son: a Plains Family Memoir . Upon his retirement from the faculty in 2000 after a teaching career of forty-three years at Amherst, Hawkins was the Anson D. Morse Professor of History and American Studies.
From the guide to the Hugh Hawkins Papers, 1914-2012, 1950-1990, (Amherst College Archives and Special Collections)
