Herbert Wallace Schneider (March 16, 1892 – October 15, 1984) was a German American professor of philosophy and a religious studies scholar long associated with Columbia University.

Born in Berea, Ohio, Schneider completed his undergraduate and graduate education at Columbia, going on to teach at that school for many years.

The Herbert Schneider Award, an annual presentation of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, is named in his honor.

[7] During the early 1940s Schneider supervised the graduate work of the yogi Theos Bernard and, in 1948, was one of five philosophy professors at Columbia who nominated the recently assassinated Mahatma Gandhi for the Nobel Peace Prize.

[10] During the 1920s and 1930s, at the request of Columbia's President, Nicolas Murray Butler, Schneider undertook a study of the emerging Fascist government in Italy.

Schneider's interest in fascism originated in his academic study of pragmatism and his view of democracy as an experimental hypothesis that had yet to prove its efficacy against alternative systems.

Almost overnight a whole new world of the imagination has been created here, apparently powerful enough to act as though it were true, and with half a chance of becoming true.In his public writings, however, he was careful to mask his personal feelings on the subject, causing one reviewer to remark that "it is impossible to tell whether his conclusions as to the Fascist mind and the heroic breed are his own judgments or simply expositions of Fascist claims".

During a 1976 interview, Schneider cautiously rejected suggestions he had been personally sympathetic to Benito Mussolini, explaining his work as academic inquiry only.