Arthur Bestor
historian
Arthur Eugene Bestor Jr. (September 20, 1908 – December 13, 1994) was a historian of the United States, and during the 1950s a noted critic of American public education.
Biography
Early life
Bestor was born on September 20, 1908, in Chautauqua, New York. He was the eldest son of Arthur E. Bestor Sr. and Jeannette Lemon. In 1904-1944 his father was the president of the Chautauqua Institution, an educational and religious community in western New York State.
Bestor was raised and educated in Chautauqua and New York City, where he attended the Horace Mann School. He received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Yale University (Ph.D. in history, 1938), where he received the John Addison Porter Prize.
Career
Bestor taught at Teachers College, Columbia University, the University of Wisconsin, Stanford University, and the University of Illinois. In 1963 he joined the faculty of the University of Washington, Seattle, where he taught until his retirement.
“Arthur Bestor” enters the record as historian. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Arthur, Bestor and historian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4797991. VIAF identifies the subject as 108469893. The Library of Congress control number is n84181477. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1908, 1994, 1904 and 1944.
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This entry incorporates text from “Arthur Bestor” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.