Julian Parks Boyd

Julian Parks Boyd (1903–28 May 1980) was an American professor who was professor of history at Princeton University.

In 1966 Boyd led a committee to defend academic freedom after steel and coal heiress Helen Frick launched a libel suit in state court against Professor Sylvester Stevens. Stevens had written a history of Pennsylvania, and she claimed his book defamed her father. A number of professional historians under the auspices of the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians collected historical data on the robber barons of that time as well as that the early histories that lionized Henry Frick were ahistorical and inaccurate idolizing of him. Helen Frick’s suit failed when Judge Clinton R. Widener, in 1967, determined that even if it were possible to defame a dead person, the historians had correctly captured Henry Frick’s largess, maltreatment of workers, and political corruption.