Later Gauss taught at Michigan and
Lehigh University in the United States, and in 1905 he became a first
preceptor at
Princeton University, where he remained until his retirement in 1946. At Princeton, Gauss became a full professor of French Literature two years after his arrival; he was chairman of the department of modern languages 1912–1936; he was director of public relations; and he served as the third
dean of the college from 1925. Among the Princeton students he influenced and corresponded frequently with were
F. Scott Fitzgerald,
Harold Medina,
Paul Elmer More, and
Edmund Wilson. Wilson credited him with inspiring Fitzgerald's development as a writer between
This Side of Paradise and
The Great Gatsby. He was particularly remembered as a champion of
Gustave Flaubert,
Dante Alighieri, and
Ernest Renan. During this period he wrote extensively for periodicals and newspapers including
The Saturday Evening Post,
The New York Times, the
Saturday Review, and
The New Republic. His book
Life in College (1930) was assembled from a series of
Saturday Evening Post articles and dedicated to the students he disciplined as dean. He was politically associated with the
socialist, non-
communist left and critiqued prevailing contemporary economic systems in his book
A Primer for Tomorrow (1934). He was a member of the national committee of the
American Civil Liberties Union. On his retirement in 1946, the honorary position of dean of alumni was created for him. After retiring, he served as president of
Phi Beta Kappa. He also began to speak to
African-American audiences in the South and to work for racial integration in churches. He was made a
Knight of the French Legion of Honor and received six honorary degrees. His last work was an introduction for a new edition of
The Prince by
Niccolò Machiavelli, finished in October 1951. Gauss died on November 1, 1951, of
heart failure, while waiting for a return train to Princeton from
Penn Station in
New York City. == Legacy ==