REDEFINING CLASSICS

Roosevelt Montás is Senior Lecturer in American Studies and English at Columbia University. Beginning in the 2025-26 academic year, he will serve as the first John and Margaret Bard Professor in Liberal Education and Civic Life at Bard College. 

Montás emigrated from the Dominican Republic to Queens, New York, when he was twelve and encountered the Western classics as an undergraduate in Columbia University’s renowned Core Curriculum, one of America’s last remaining Great Books programs. The experience changed his life and determined his career—he went on to earn a PhD in English and comparative literature, serve as director of Columbia’s Center for the Core Curriculum for ten years, and start a Great Books program for low-income high school students who aspire to be the first in their families to attend college. He speaks and writes on the history, meaning, and future of liberal education and is author of Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation (Princeton University Press, 2021).