November 28, 1933

President MacCracken announced the appointment of Professor Moritz Alfred Geiger, formerly professor of philosophy at the University of Göttingen, to succeed the late Woodbridge Riley. The German phenomenologist, expelled by the Nazis, had come to the United States earlier in the year.

By the end of January 1934, some 275 distinguished European scholars were relocated to American campuses—“including all the leading institutions of learning in the United States, with the exception of Harvard University,” as The New York Times put it—with some 1,200 still seeking refuge. Professor Geiger arrived at Vassar on March 1, 1934.