Herb London, longtime Hudson Institute president, trustee and fellow, passed away on Saturday, November 10, 2018. He was 79 years old.
Herb was a larger than life personality whose charm, humor and take on life, history and the policy events of the day were unforgettable. A varsity basketball player at Columbia as an undergraduate—and before that, as captain of the citywide champion Jamaica High School team—Herb achieved early success as a singer, including seeing some of his 45 rpm records become pop hits. But he soon turned his attention to ideas, and, after completing his doctorate at New York University, joined the faculty there, and founded and was dean of what became NYU’s Gallatin division, an interdisciplinary program that, under his leadership for two decades, was a center for teaching the great books.
Herb was, as Roger Kimball of The New Criterion noted, “a brilliant polemicist” and “a passionate advocate of conservative values.” He hosted numerous radio programs and was a regular on cable news channels, including as substitute host for CNN’s Crossfire. A regular columnist, he was the author or co-author of more than 25 books, on themes ranging from the American character to rock music to Sunni radicalism. He ran for public office numerous times, most notably for Governor as a Conservative in 1990, when he received what, at that time, was the largest percentage of the vote that a third-party candidate for governor had ever received.
Herb was a big part of the Hudson family for four decades, first, as senior fellow and founder of Hudson’s Center on Education and Employment Policy in the 1970s, and later as Hudson trustee. Herb played a significant role in sustaining Hudson’s prominence as a research organization in the aftermath of Herman Kahn’s death in 1983. He served as Hudson president from 1997 to 2011. Under Herb’s leadership, the Institute started to take its contemporary shape: he moved the Institute from Indianapolis to Washington, saw the development of event platforms in New York and Washington, and hired key talent who remain central to Hudson today.
Herb is survived by his wife Vicki and three daughters.