The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent (1914), by John Erskine, is an essay first presented to the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Amherst College, where Erskine taught before working as a professor of English at Columbia University. Originally, “The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent” was published in the quarterly magazine The Hibbert Journal, in 1914, and a year later was published in the essay collection The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent, and Other Essays (1915). Moreover, during his twenty-eight-year tenure (1909–1937) at Columbia University, Erskine formulated the General Honors Course. In the early 1920s he taught a great books course at Columbia, which later founded the influential Great Books movement. Source: Wikipedia (en)