English Writings of Hu ShihHu Shih (1891 1962),. In the 1910s, Hu studied at Cornell University and later Columbia University, both in the United States. At Columbia, he was greatly influenced by his professor, John Dewey, and became a lifelong advocate of pragmatic evolutionary change. He received his Ph. D. in Philosophy in 1917 and returned to lecture at Peking University. Hu soon became one of the leading and most influential intellectuals during the May Fourth Movement and