Frank Hamilton Hankins
September 27, 1877 – January 24, 1970
Frank H. Hankins served as the 28th President of the American Sociological Society (name later changed to Association). His Presidential Address, “Social Science and Social Action,” was presented at the organization’s annual meeting in Detroit, Michigan in December 1938. Hankins donated his professional papers to the Smith College Archives; a finding aid for his papers is available online. The Smith College Archives provides the following biographical sketch of Hankins:
Frank Hamilton Hankins was born on September 27, 1877 in Wilkshire, Ohio. He grew up in Kansas, where he received an A.B. from Baker University in 1901. He served as superintendent of schools in Waverly, Kansas for two years before entering Columbia University. As a graduate student and fellow in statistics, Hankins was strongly influenced by the philosophy and logic of John Stuart Mill, the sociology of Giddings, Spencer, and Ward, and the quantitative work of Quetelet, Galton, and Pearson. His doctoral dissertation, Adolphe Quetelet as Statitician (1908), was an important contribution to the development of empirical sociology.
Hankins served as a member of the Clark University faculty for sixteen years (1906-22), and head of the Department of Political and Social Science beginning in 1908. Clark, at the time, was under the leadership of the influential psychologist G. Stanley Hall, and was visited by famous psychoanalysts such as Sigmund Freud and Havelock Ellis. Thus, it was a center of research, graduate study, and stimulating scholarly controversy. Hankins contributed numerous articles to scholarly journals, lectured frequently at other universities, studied social conditions in Europe before and after World War I, and taught at the Ecole Libre des Sciences Politique in Paris in 1921.
Hankins joined the Smith College faculty in 1922 as Professor of Sociology, and for many years he served as department chairman, until he left Smith in 1946. Under the presidency of William Allan Neilson, Smith was an exciting and non-cloistered campus. Hankins, in his years at Smith, built up an excellent group of sociologists on campus, which included people such as Harry Elmer Barnes, Ray Billington, G.A. Borgese, Merle Curti, and Harold Faulkner, among others. Hankins was very active on many different boards and organizations on population and individual rights. In 1930, Hankins was elected the first President of the American Sociological Society, and in 1945 President of the American Population Association. He also taught and lectured widely, serving on the faculties of Amherst College, Columbia, Berkeley, the Army Center at Biarritz, and, following his retirement from Smith, the University of Pennsylvania. In 1936, he studied, on the scene, social conditions in Nazi Germany.
Hankins contributed widely to scholarly journals, anthologies, and the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. His ground-breaking study, The Racial Basis of Civilization: A Critique of the Nordic Doctrine, was published in 1926. In 1928, he published An Introduction to the Study of Society, a textual treatise presenting his principal theoretical and substantive concerns and convictions. Hankins’ writings reveal a keen interest in the role of biological factors in social life and history and, conversely, in the role of such selective processes as urbanization, education, persecution, and war in the determination of population quantity and quality. He argued in favor of birth control, more for the lower classes and less for the privileged. He condemned authoritarian institutions and practices and supported the maximization of opportunity for all. He also denounced racist policies and believed that racially mixed populations were physically and socially beneficial.
Hankins died of a heart attack at the age of 92 on January 24, 1970 in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey. At the time of his death, he was an eminent sociologist and demographer, distinguished author and lecturer, provocative and influential teacher, an ardent proponent of a strictly scientific sociology, and a concerned humanist.
Obituary
Written by Charles H. Page, published in The American Sociologist, 5(3):288-289
During his ninety-second year and until the end a man of remarkable vigor, Frank H. Hankins died of a heart attack on January 24 in New York City. This event took from our ranks an eminent sociologist and demographer, distinguished author and lecturer, provocative and influential teacher, ardent proponent of a strictly scientific sociology and concerned humanist, and beloved friend of many members of at least three generations. His “vita,” only a part of which can be reported here, merely suggests the magnitude and diversity of Frank Hankins’s legacy.
Born in Wilkshire, Ohio, Hankins grew up in Kansas, where he graduated from Baker University in 1901. With his A.B. in hand, he followed the then-familiar pattern of serving as superintendent of schools (in Waverly, Kansas) for two years before entering Columbia University. As a graduate student and fellow in statistics, Hankins was strongly influenced by the philosophy and logic of John Stuart Mill, by the sociology of Giddings (for whom he had lasting admiration), by Spencer and Ward, and by the quantitative work of Quetelet, Galton, and Pearson; his doctoral dissertation, Adolphe Quetelet as Statistician (1908), was an important contribution to the development of empirical sociology.
For sixteen years (1906 to 1922) Hankins was a member of the faculty of Clark University, and from 1908 he was head of its Department of Political and Social Science. Under the presidential leadership of the influential psychologist G. Stanley Hall, Clark University was an important center of research, graduate study, and stimulating scholarly controversy, spurred by the famous visits of Sigmund Freud and Havelock Ellis, such dynamic local figures as the psychiatrist Adolf Meyer, the learned and bombastic Harry Elmer Barnes, and Hankins himself. Among Hankins’s students at Clark were Howard Odum, E. Franklin Frazier, and Clifford Kirkpatrick, who were encouraged by their young teacher-colleague to pursue careers as sociologists; that they did so has of course enriched our many-sided field.
Hankins’s years at Clark were busy and productive: he contributed substantially to scholarly journals, lectured frequently at other universities, was an active member for several years of the Worcester school committee, studied social conditions in Europe before and after World War I, and in 1921 taught at the Ecole Libre des Sciences Politique in Paris. In 1922 Hankins, with Barnes and others, left Clark University, but Hankins returned in 1964 to receive the Doctorate of Humane Letters.
Smith College, where Hankins was professor of sociology from 1922 to 1946, for most of this period as department chairman, was an exciting and noncloistered campus under the presidency of the nonpareil William Allen Nielson. Hankins’s colleagues in history and the social sciences included Barnes, Ray Billington, G. A. Borgese, Merle Curti, Harold Faulkner, Kurt Koffka, Hans Kohn, and Will Orton, as well as such sociologists as Howard Becker, Gladys Bryson, and Kingsley Davis (Hankins built well- in succeeding decades Smith has maintained a cadre of excellent sociologists). In Smith’s cosmopolitan setting that offered the same challenge and stimulation as had the earlier Clark, Hankins was a social activist, a leader of his profession, and a renowned and peripatetic teacher. A deeply concerned student of population, he was active on the governing boards of the American Eugenics Society, the Population Reference Bureau, the Euthanasian Society of America, the International Population Union, and the Planned Parenthood Federation; an ardent supporter of individual rights, he was an early member of the American Civil Liberties Union; a confirmed rationalist, he was a long-time contributor to The Humanist (in 1960 he was named a “Humanist Pioneer”).
In 1930 Hankins was elected the first president of the Eastern Sociological Society; in 1936 he became the first editor of the American Sociological Review, and a year later he was elected president of the American Sociological Society; in 1945 he became president of the American Population Association. Hankins taught and lectured widely: at Amherst College (where he subversively introduced sociology under the cloak of “economics”), Columbia, the New School, Berkeley, the Army Center at Biarritz (1945 to 1946), and, following his retirement from Smith, at the University of Pennsylvania (1946 to 1948). He was a member of Research Sociologists, the Committee on Family Research, and the American Society of Naturalists. In 1936 he studied, on the scene, social conditions in Nazi Germany.
Hankins’s bibliography is impressive. In addition to his volume on Quetelet, he contributed widely to scholarly journals, anthologies, and the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (seventeen articles, including sturdy pieces on Charles Darwin, birth control, divorce, and social discrimination). His ground-breaking study, The Racial Basis of Civilization: A Critique of the Nordic Doctrine, was published in 1926, and two years later appeared An Introduction to the Study of Society (revised in 1935), a textual treatise presenting Hankins’s principal theoretical and substantive concerns and convictions.
Hankins was a scientific determinist, but he remained’ skeptical of the capacity of social science to rival the theoretical and applied achievements of the natural sciences because of the complexity and changing nature of social causation. In a recent private document, he expressed his general orientation by rejecting the “robot” notion “that the stream of culture is a wholly independent variable and mankind wholly dependent thereon, because the human mind is the catalytic agent in culture change and scientific knowledge the basic progressive factor therein.” His writings show an abiding and powerful interest in the role of biological factors in social life and history and, conversely, in the roles of such selective processes as urbanization, education, persecution, and war in the determination of population quantity and quality. He argued strongly that differential fertility between classes is dysfunctional for society and that this problem should be met by birth control: more for the lower strata and less for the privileged.
Hankins was critical of the egalitarian assumptions of political democracy, but he condemned authoritarian institutions and practices and advocated maximization of opportunity for all. In The Racial Basis of Civilization and elsewhere, he questioned the view that members of different racial stocks are equally capable of individual and cultural achievement and emphasized the fact that the populations of all large societies are racially mixed; he maintained that such mixture is physically and socially beneficial, and he denounced racist policies. Hankins’s work, then, wears the three traditional faces of sociology: scientific, humanistic, and reformistic.
In the circles of both gown and town, and among both cosmopolitans and locals, Frank Hankins enjoyed wide esteem and deep affection. Tough-minded, at times viewed as stubborn, a doughty opponent in debate, he persistently sought new knowledge and ideas, had little use for conventional or fashionable wisdom as such, and welcomed the challenge of intellectual dispute. He was a sensitive and generous friend, a chairman guided by collegial norms, and a wise counselor who encouraged students and younger col leagues to pursue their own interests. He was a delightful companion, splendid host, skillful gardener, enthusiastic philatelist, and became in recent decades an investment expert and, of course, he was much more.
For many years, until the fall of 1969, Frank Hankins and his wife, the former Anne Keeling, graced one of the oldest and loveliest homes in Northampton. Besides Mrs. Hankins, he is survived by his brother Dr. Ralph H. Hankins, his sons Frank H., Jr., and Dr. Orville L. Hankins, his daughter Margaret (Mrs. James A. Farmer), six grand children, and five great-grandchildren
