Committee on Social Thought
The John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought is a PhD-granting committee at the Social Sciences Division at the University of Chicago. It was started in 1941 by economic historian John Ulric Nef along with economist Frank Knight, anthropologist Robert Redfield, and University President Robert Maynard Hutchins.
The Committee
The committee is interdisciplinary and it is not centered on any specific topic; rather, the committee has, since its inception, drawn together noted academics and writers to "foster awareness of the permanent questions at the origin of all learned inquiry".; Chairs
Noted members
Notable past members of and students on the committee have included- writers Saul Bellow, J. M. Coetzee, T. S. Eliot, and Adam Zagajewski
- political theorists Hannah Arendt, Allan Bloom, and Mark Lilla,
- classicist David Grene,
- historians Marc Fumaroli, Marshall G. S. Hodgson, David Nirenberg, and Paul Wheatley,
- sociologist Edward Shils,
- sinologist Anthony C. Yu,
- anthropologist Victor Turner,
- poet and philologist A. K. Ramanujan,
- poet Tom Mandel,
- philosophers Vincent Descombes, Mircea Eliade, Leszek Kołakowski, Jacques Maritain, Yves Simon, Paul Ricoeur, Stephen Toulmin, and Jean-Luc Marion.
- economists Robert Fogel and Friedrich Hayek.