German department, though it was soon made optional in 1847. By the late-19th century, many American universities, including Harvard, had seen a trend towards more elective programs. President Frederick A. P. Barnard was an early supporter of this movement—in 1872, Yale President Noah Porter criticized him as one of "the educational reformers who should know better" for his advocacy in favor of elective curricula and his support for Charles William Eliot of Harvard. During his tenure he managed to establish a system wherein roughly half of a student's courses would be electives, and the other half required by the faculty, though his stance would lose ground at the college over the following decades. However, this began to change starting in the 1880 with the introduction of the modern language requirement; Columbia dropped Ancient Greek as an entrance examination requirement in 1897, and Latin in 1916. This gradual thaw, along with university's move to Morningside Heights just prior to World War I, set the stage for a major change in curricular focus in the early 20th century. "Contemporary Civilization" In 1917, the United States Army commissioned the university to create a "war issues" course in order to educate the Student Army Training Corps, and to explain the causes of WWI and the reasons for US involvement in the conflict. Following the war, in 1919, this course was transformed into "Contemporary Civilization," the oldest course of the Core Curriculum, which faculty presented as a "peace issues" course intended to confront the realities of the post-war era. Writing about "Contemporary Civilization", Dean Herbert Hawkes stated that "its significance rested on the fundamental principle that in the long run man's accomplishment can rise no higher than his ideals, and that an understanding of the worth of the cause for which one is fighting is a powerful weapon in the hands of an intelligent man." In 1928, "Contemporary Civilization" was enlarged and split into two courses: "Introduction to Contemporary Civilization in the West" or "CC-A", focusing on Western history from 1200 to the present, and "Contemporary Problems in the United States" or "CC-B", which emphasized questions of modern politics and economics. In 1932, "CC-B" was revised in the face of the Great Depression to center the questions of economic security, institutions, and policies. The course was dropped altogether in 1968, while the "CC-A" syllabus was overhauled to focus on politics and revolution in response to