The John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought is one of several PhD-granting committees at the University of Chicago. It was started in 1941 by economic historian John Ulric Nef along with economist Frank Knight, anthropologist Robert Redfield, and University President Robert Maynard Hutchins.
Robert Redfield (December 4, 1897 – October 16, 1958) was an American anthropologist and ethnolinguist, whose ethnographic work in Tepoztlán, Mexico, is considered a landmark of Latin American ethnography. He was associated with the University of Chicago for his entire career: all of his higher education took place there, and he joined the faculty in 1927 and remained there until his death in 1958, serving as Dean of Social Sciences from 1934 to 1946. Redfield was a co-founder of the University of Chicago Committee on Social Thought alongside other prominent Chicago professors Robert Maynard Hutchins, Frank Knight, and John UIrich Nef.
Marshall Goodwin Simms Hodgson (April 11, 1922 – June 10, 1968) was an American historian and scholar of Islamic studies, best known for his pioneering work on Islamic civilization and his broader contributions to world history. He taught at the University of Chicago, where he developed an influential yearlong course on Islamic civilizations and later chaired the interdisciplinary Committee on Social Thought.
Hodgson's scholarship, particularly through his posthumously published three-volume work The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, introduced new interpretive frameworks to understand Islam's global and cultural complexity. He critiqued Eurocentrism and coined the term "Islamicate" to distinguish cultural phenomena associated with Muslim societies from those that are strictly religious.
John Ulric Nef, Jr. (1899–1988) was an American economic historian, and the co-founder of the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought. He was associated with the University of Chicago for over half a century, and co-founded the Committee there in 1941.