Moses Lecture History

The Bernard Moses Memorial Lectureship in the Social Sciences was established by the President Robert Gordon Sproul and the Regents of the University of California in 1937. The lectureship honors the memory of the late Bernard Moses, a professor of history and political science at the University of California from 1875 to 1911, and an emeritus professor from 1911 until his death in 1930.

Born in 1846 in Connecticut, Moses was a descendant of Welsh immigrants who arrived in America in 1631. After earning his bachelor's degree at the University of Michigan in 1870, he studied at several German universities before receiving his Ph.D. at Heidelberg in 1873. In June 1880, Moses married Mary Edith Briggs, with whom he had one daughter. He conducted research in Sweden for a year and stayed briefly at Albion College before accepting a faculty position at the University of California, Berkeley in 1876.

During his first seven years at the University, Moses was the only lecturer in history, economics, political science, and jurisprudence, and, eventually, became the founder of these departments. He published nearly 200 articles and more than a dozen books. Moses also was a founder of the American Political Science Association and was recognized as a forceful and convincing speaker and a distinguished public servant.

Bernard Moses greatly influenced the study of Hispanic-American history in the United States. From 1894 to 1895, he was the only professor in the country who devoted his time to Hispanic-American subject matter. His lectures, “The Establishment of Spanish Rule in America,” were published as an influential book and positioned Moses as an expert on worsening Spanish-American relations.

In 1900, President McKinley appointed Moses to the Philippines Commission, which was responsible for creating an American-style democratic government in the former Spanish colony. In the Philippines, Moses headed the Bureau of Education and became Secretary of Public Instruction in the civil government. As an advocate of educational cooperation between North and South America, Moses went to the 1908 Pan American Scientific Congress in Santiago, Chile as a delegate of the United States. He was also a member of the International Conference of American States in Buenos Aires in 1910. That same year, he became one of President Taft’s ministers plenipotentiary to Chile on the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Chilean War of Independence.

One of the University’s academic titans, Moses greatly contributed to its early development and played a leading role in setting its basic standards and establishing its ideals. His contributions as a pioneer scholar in the problems of Latin-American republics earned him a world-wide reputation. He insisted that American history include the attempts of at least English and Spanish regimes, if not every nation, to found and develop civilized societies in the Western Hemisphere.

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