He enlisted in the United States Army in 1944 after graduating from high school and served in the European Theater of Operations during World War II.
He received a Ph.D. in English from Princeton University in 1955 after completing a doctoral dissertation titled "The writing of Henry D. Thoreau's A week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers: a study in textual materials and technique.
[2] The students protests had begun in April 1968 in response to plans by Columbia to construct a gym in Morningside Park that was opposed by Harlem residents and by disclosures of university ties to the Institute for Defense Analyses, a weapons research think-tank connected with the United States Department of Defense.
Once he was appointed as dean, Hovde stated that he felt that the "sit-ins and the demonstrations were not without cause" and opposed criminal charges being filed against the students by the university, though he did agree that the protesters "were acting with insufficient cause".
[3] Following his tenure as dean, the Columbia Daily Spectator credited Hovde with having "sought to quietly guide the college, not to rule it; to use the force of persuasion and reason, not the blunt power of authority".