Gilbert Highet

Gilbert Arthur Highet (June 22, 1906 – January 20, 1978) was a Scottish-American classicist, academic, writer, intellectual, critic and literary historian.

Born in Scotland, Gilbert Highet is best known as a mid-20th-century teacher of the humanities in the United States. He attended Hillhead High School, Glasgow,Glasgow University and, on both a Snell and a Jenkyns Exhibition,Balliol College, Oxford. His Oxford career was distinguished by a First in Classical Moderations, 1930, an Ireland and Craven Scholarship, 1930, the Chancellor's Prize for Latin Verse, 1931, and a First in Literae Humaniores ('Greats', philosopher and ancient history) in 1932. He was appointed a fellow of St John's College, Oxford in 1932 and remained at the college until 1938 when he moved to Columbia University.

He had met his wife, the well-known novelist Helen MacInnes, while they were fellow-students at Glasgow, and they married in 1932. In 1938 he was appointed to the chair of Latin & Greek at Columbia University. He stayed at Columbia until 1971 (except for British Army service during World War II). He became an American citizen in 1951, following his appointment as Anthon Professor of Latin Language and Literature in 1950. See his obituary in The Times, January 26, 1978.

Highet devoted most of his energy to teaching, but he also aspired to raise the level of mass culture and achieved a broader influence by publishing essays and books, hosting his own radio program, acting as a judge for the Book-of-the-Month Club, and serving on the editorial board of Horizon magazine.

Like others teaching at Columbia at this time – Lionel Trilling, Mark Van Doren, Eric Bentley, Ernest Nagel – Gilbert Highet conceived of his work as the fostering of a tradition. "These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but 'minds' alive on the shelves," Highet wrote. He believed that "The chief aim of education is to show you, after you make a livelihood, how to enjoy living; and you can live longest and best and most rewardingly by attaining and preserving the happiness of learning."

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