Hu Shih and Ambedkar sat in the same Dewey seminar — Philosophy 131-132, "Moral and Political Philosophy," 1915-1916

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Scott R. Stroud identifies a considerably tighter link between Hu Shih and B.R. Ambedkar than "both were Dewey's students in the same rough decade" — the framing this vault held before this note. Stroud states he has "determined" that Hu Shih "sat in the same philosophy seminar with Dewey as did Ambedkar in 1915-1916," and elsewhere writes that Dewey was, quite literally, "in the same room as Hu Shih and Bhimrao Ambedkar in his Philosophy 131-132 course sequence at Columbia University." In a later social-media reply, Stroud confirms this specific classroom-identity claim — naming the exact course, "Philosophy 131-132: Moral and Political Philosophy" — is documented in his 2023 University of Chicago Press book itself, not only in his blog writing.

This sharpens observation-dewey-mentored-hu-shih-ambedkar-two-nation-refounding-bridge's earlier claim that the two "never appear together in either source" — they now do, in a single scholar's identification of a shared course roster, though this remains Stroud's own archival reconstruction rather than a document in Dewey's own hand naming both students together (see claim-dewey-correspondence-and-works-contain-no-mention-of-ambedkar for the countervailing fact that Dewey's own correspondence never names Ambedkar at all).