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“In the Name of Freedom”: a Review of Judith Friedlander’s A Light in Dark Times (2018, Columbia University Press)

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Notes

  1. Dewey, John. “In Explanation of Our Lapse,” The New Republic, November 3, 1917, p. 17.

  2. I use Dorothy’s full name here as it tells a different story than the one portrayed in Friedlander’s account. She is listed until 1930 on the Board of Directors, after 1925 as Mrs. Leonard Elmhirst. (The New School Archives and Special Collections n.d.) She also continued financial support for several years after 1929, through the William C. Whitney Foundation. (The Dartington Hall Trust Archives) I believe these ongoing contributions are more likely what Johnson is referencing in the 1952 fundraising letter that Friedlander quotes in full (p. 307) to characterize Dorothy and other founders including Learned Hand and Mary Harriman as antisemites. For the record, I am not sure what kind of antisemite Dorothy would have been, but based on accounts that she aided Johnson in the University in Exile, (Cornell University n.d.; The Dorothy Whitney Straight Elmhirst Papers n.d.) and the fact that Clara Mayer goes to her as a sympathetic character in 1962 to tell the story of the New School, (The Dartington Hall Trust Archives) I suggest she may have not been a very good one.

  3. And mother of one of his children.

  4. Minister of Science, Education and the People’s Education.

  5. Finally, Swift urged the New School to build a proper endowment, repeating what Johnson had been saying for years. “It was quixotic to refused creating an endowment at the time of its founding.” (p. 221); “As Alvin Johnson complained on many occasions, the founders of the New School had compromised the future of the institution by refusing to build an endowment.” (p. 305); etc.

  6. A Proposal for an Independent School of Social Science for Men and Women, 1918, The New School Archives and Special Collections.

  7. And solving the imbalance with opening another food pantry.

  8. Commissioned by the New School in 1952. (The New School Archives and Special Collections)

  9. Who by his own admission in Pioneer’s Progress 1952 did not attend board meetings in the first few years.

  10. A Proposal for an Independent School of Social Science for Men and Women, 1918, The New School Archives and Special Collections.

  11. A Proposal for an Independent School of Social Science for Men and Women, 1918, The New School Archives and Special Collections.

References

  • Cornell University (n.d.), Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Carl A. Kroch Library; The Dorothy Whitney Straight Elmhirst Papers.

  • The Dartington Hall Trust Archives n.d., Devon Heritage Centre, Exeter, UK.

  • Johnson, A. (1952). Pioneer’s progress: an autobiography. New York: Viking Press.

  • Krohn, C.-D. (1993). Intellectuals in exile: refugee scholars and the New School for Social Research, translated by Rita and Robert Kimber, foreword by Arthur Vidich. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

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  • New School for Social Research. A proposal for an independent school of social science for men and women. circa 1918. New School Publicity Office records; Promotional publications, writings and fundraising materials. New School Archives and Special Collections Digital Archive.

  • Rauchway, E. (2001). The refuge of affections: family and American reform politics, 1900–1920. New York: Columbia University Press.

  • Rauchway, E. (1999). A gentlemen’s club in a women’s sphere: how Dorothy Whitney Straight created the new republic. Journal of Women’s History, 11(2).

  • Rutkoff, P. M., & Scott, W. B. (1986). New school: a history of the new school for social research. New York: The Free Press.

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  • The New School Archives & Special Collections n.d.

  • Vidich, Arthur J. Contemporary sociology, vol. 16, no. 3, 1987, pp. 274–276. (Note: further reviews in the symposium found on pp 276–280.)

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Acknowledgments

I am thankful to my colleague, Thomas Cantone, for his encouragement and patient feedback on several drafts of this review.

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  1. New School for Social Research, New York City, NY, USA

    Tara Mastrelli

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Correspondence to Tara Mastrelli.

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Mastrelli, T. “In the Name of Freedom”: a Review of Judith Friedlander’s A Light in Dark Times (2018, Columbia University Press). Int J Polit Cult Soc 34, 125–135 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-019-09344-5

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