[4] At Columbia, in addition to such subjects essential for admission to the Bar, he took courses in public law and jurisprudence offered in the recently organized School of Political Science.

Goodnow took up his teaching in October 1884 at Columbia, giving some instruction in History as well as in United States Administrative Law.

[8] The plan was attempted again in substantially the same form, in the early 1950s, under President Detlev W. Bronk, meeting with the same lack of success.

Goodnow resigned the Johns Hopkins University Presidency in 1929 and was succeeded by Joseph Sweetman Ames, but thereafter frequently gave graduate lectures in his special subjects.

Goodnow was also a well-known and influential Progressive, authoring a critical view of America's founding principles in his 1916 essay: The American Conception of Liberty.

In 1900, he began teaching a course on "The History and Principles of Colonial Administration" at Columbia University "to meet the demands occasioned by the new position assumed by the United States" by educating "those who desire to serve the country in its new possessions."

[13] Goodnow's course at Columbia University and the accompanying manuscript were concerned with principles for the design of "administrative systems" in the dependencies.

to treat the Filipinos as anything but a dependent race," Goodnow said, "which must for long years be denied any great share in the government of the islands.

The brown and yellow peoples of India, China and Japan were less advanced but still had some degree of civilization, while in South America interbreeding had produced "a new race .

But he quoted Rudyard Kipling and wrote about "the white man's burden"—the "duty or destiny" to bring "a higher and a better civilization" to "our less fortunate brothers.

"[17] In the Philippines, Goodnow said that it would be misguided to "treat the Filipino as if he were a white man with centuries of experience and achievement back of him.

In October 1912 he accepted, on the recommendation of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the commission of constitutional adviser to the Chinese Government which took him to China in March 1913.

Yuan had hired Goodnow at the recommendation of Charles Eliot, a former president of Harvard University, and had tasked him with drafting a new constitution.

The first effectively made Yuan president for life, and granted him sweeping powers over the budget and foreign policy.

[19][20] Goodnow became known for his assertion that the Chinese people were not mature enough for a democratic form of government—a position that was later utilized by Yuan, as he attempted to proclaim himself the Emperor of China in 1915–1916.

Goodnow claimed that there was "an almost complete absence in the minds of the Chinese people of the idea of individual rights" and that "absolutist government" was a necessity: "It is useless to expect that a political organization based upon conditions of the West can be advantageously adopted in China.