---
aliases:
- Alvin Johnson
- Alvin Saunders Johnson
- Alvin S. Johnson
- Johnson, Alvin
- Johnson, Alvin Saunders
born: 1874-12-18
category: Scientists & Researchers
created: 2026-10-09
died: 1971-06-07
location: Homer, Nebraska; New York, New York; Upper Nyack, New York
relations:
- fn: 1
  role: co-founder
  start: 1919
  type: founded
  with: '[[New School for Social Research]]'
- end: 1946
  fn: 1
  role: director, later president
  start: 1922
  type: head_of
  with: '[[New School for Social Research]]'
- end: 1923
  fn: 1
  role: economics editor
  start: 1917
  type: employed_by
  with: '[[New Republic]]'
- end: 1935
  fn: 40
  role: associate editor
  start: 1927
  type: participant_in
  with: '[[Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences]]'
- fn: 34
  role: met regularly with FBI officials to report on the faculty, by his own acknowledgment
    in private letters
  start: 1930
  type: informant_for
  with: '[[Federal Bureau of Investigation]]'
- fn: 31
  role: gave an address at the inaugural meeting, November 17, 1943
  start: 1943-11
  type: participant_in
  with: '[[Institute of World Affairs]]'
summary: Alvin Saunders Johnson was an American economist and editor who co-founded
  the New School for Social Research and organized the University in Exile for scholars
  displaced from Germany after 1933.
tags:
- Person
- AlvinJohnson
- NewSchoolForSocialResearch
- UniversityInExile
- EmergencyCommittee
- RockefellerFoundation
- EncyclopaediaOfTheSocialSciences
- FBIReporting
updated: 2026-10-09
---

Alvin Saunders Johnson (December 18, 1874 to June 7, 1971) was an American economist, editor and educator who co-founded the [New School for Social Research](/organizations/new-school-for-social-research/) in New York and served as its director and then its president.[^1][^2] He was associate editor of the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences and the organizer of the [University in Exile](/organizations/new-school-for-social-research/), the New School division that gave refuge to scholars whose careers were being upended in Europe after 1933.[^3] The [New York Times](/organizations/new-york-times/) reported on June 9, 1971, that he died "Monday night" at his home in Upper Nyack, aged 96, and had been president emeritus since 1945.[^4]

### Nebraska, Columbia and the New Republic

Johnson was born near Homer, Nebraska, and took a bachelor's degree in classics at the University of Nebraska in 1897. He received a doctorate in economics from [Columbia University](/organizations/columbia-university/) in 1902.[^1] He taught between 1902 and 1917 at Bryn Mawr College, Columbia, Cornell University, [Stanford University](/organizations/stanford-university/), the University of Nebraska, the University of Texas and the University of Chicago.[^1] From 1902 to 1906 he edited the Political Science Quarterly, and in the same period he took part in a study of prostitution in New York City made for the Committee of Fifteen, published in 1902 as *The Social Evil*.[^1]

From 1917 he was economics editor of the New Republic until about 1923.[^1] The school's histories page describes him as editor of the magazine from 1917.[^2]

### The New School, 1919 to 1946

The school's archive says that in 1919 Johnson joined a group of New Republic colleagues and Columbia professors, including Charles Beard, James Harvey Robinson, John Dewey and Wesley Clair Mitchell, to found the school.[^1] The school's histories page gives 1918 as the year Johnson co-founded it.[^2] The Times obituary gives 1919 and lists Beard, Dewey, Thorstein Veblen, Robinson and Mitchell as his co-founders.[^4] Johnson's own memoir names Mrs. Willard Straight and Mrs. George Bacon among the liberals who launched it.[^5]

The school had no endowment. Rutkoff and Scott's history records that Robinson and Beard found in Herbert Croly and [Dorothy Payne Whitney Straight](/people/dorothy-payne-whitney/) "sympathetic and resourceful patrons," and that ten-year pledges of nearly $300,000 came largely from Straight.[^6][^7] In 1922 the New Republic was short of money, and the same history reports that its owners wanted the school closed so that Straight would support the magazine.[^8]

Johnson became director in April 1922, after serving as a trustee, and wrote to Straight after taking the post.[^1][^9] He held the post as director and later president until 1946.[^1] The school's histories page says he officially retired in December 1945 and died in 1971 in Upper Nyack, New York.[^2] He continued as president emeritus, raising money for the school, for about twenty-five years after that.[^1]

### The University in Exile

In April 1933 Johnson began to raise $60,000 a year for two years to support a faculty of fifteen scholars at $4,000 each.[^3] Rutkoff and Scott put the sum he had collected before the largest gift at between $7,000 and $15,000.[^10]

[Hiram J. Halle](/people/hiram-j-halle/) supplied the guarantee. The school's history states that after Johnson had raised only $10,000 he received the whole $60,000 from Halle.[^3] Rutkoff and Scott write that Halle had pledged the whole amount Johnson required before the announcement of May 13, 1933, that he wanted his name kept out of it, and that he had "made his fortune in petroleum refining and finance."[^10] In Johnson's account, Halle telephoned him after a letter Johnson had written to Edwin R.A. Seligman reached him. Johnson had answered Halle's question about the amount pledged with "Twelve thousand," and Halle said: "I am prepared to guarantee the sixty thousand a year for two years, so that you can go ahead at once." Johnson writes that Frank Altschul vouched for Halle's credit, saying that Halle's signature on a check for a million dollars would be accepted by any bank, and that Altschul advised keeping the offer quiet because nobody would contribute if he knew Halle was ready to carry the whole load.[^11] The historian Daniel Bessner describes Halle as part owner of the Gulf Oil Company and associated with the [Rockefeller Foundation](/organizations/rockefeller-foundation/).[^12] Bessner also writes that Johnson "had collected $120,000 from the Jewish philanthropist Hiram Halle, which allowed him to fund fifteen professorships at a salary of $4,000 per year."[^13]

A 1938 invitation from Halle to Albert Einstein for the fall barbecue at Halle's Pound Ridge property described the gathering as one at which "Dr. Alvin Johnson with the staff, professors and trustees of the" University in Exile came together with their families. Einstein declined, citing poor health.[^14]

Rutkoff and Scott write that Johnson recruited two additional "Rockefeller scholars," the Italian political scientist [Max Ascoli](/people/max-ascoli/) and the Austrian Erich Hula, and that Johnson persuaded the Foundation to appoint [Hans Simons](/people/hans-simons/) in Hula's place after Hula first rejected the offer.[^15] The same history lists Johnson's 1934 additions as Alfred Kahler, Fritz Lehmann, Arthur Feiler and Hans Staudinger.[^15] Ascoli joined the University in Exile in late 1933.[^16] Johnson's account of the appointments ends with [Kurt Riezler](/people/kurt-riezler/): "With Riezler the roster was closed."[^17] The school's history records that the Foundation and Harold Laski of the London School of Economics recommended [Leo Strauss](/people/leo-strauss/) to Johnson.[^18]

### Rockefeller Foundation and the choice of scholars

Johnson and the Foundation agreed on about a dozen individuals to rescue. The Foundation's associate in [Paris](/places/paris/), Tracy Kittredge, wrote on March 29, 1933.[^19][^20] Rutkoff and Scott write that the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars acted for the Foundation in these cases, and that the Foundation wished to salvage "the most empirical segment of German social science."[^21][^22] The Rockefeller Archive Center's account of the Foundation's refugee program says its officers worked closely with Johnson from 1933 onward, and it cites a July 31, 1941 letter from Marc Bloch to Johnson in the Foundation's records.[^23]

Johnson writes that the Foundation "had never been very cordial to the New School or to me," and that he decided to ask its president, Raymond Fosdick, for traveling expenses and a two-year stipend for five scholars. He revised the figure to fifteen on the bus to Rockefeller Center and to twenty-five in the elevator, and when Fosdick asked how many could be cared for he answered that the project was not worth undertaking "unless we are prepared to take care of a hundred." Fosdick said he would consult his trustees and telephoned the next day to say they had approved.[^24] He also writes that the Foundation supplied expert information on which refugees were Nazi or Fascist.[^24] The Times obituary of Johnson repeats the Fosdick account and states that the Foundation approved the request and assured the financing of 100 emigres.[^4]

### The Emergency Committee

The Emergency Committee was formed in May 1933, when Alfred E. Cohn, Bernard Flexner and Fred M. Stein approached Stephen Duggan of the Institute of International Education. Felix Warburg and Alan Gregg advised the organizers, and Livingston Farrand chaired the committee.[^25] The committee made grants to host institutions rather than to scholars, and it made 335 grants from about 6,000 applicants.[^26] Duggan invited Johnson to lunch after the University in Exile was announced and told him of the committee's plan.[^27] Edward R. Murrow was its assistant secretary until 1935.[^25]

The committee's records hold a New School file for 1933 to 1945, and they include Johnson's name in executive committee correspondence for 1940 to 1945. They also hold applicant files filed under the heading "Non-Grantees" for [Hans Speier](/people/hans-speier/), Gerhard Colm, Arnold Brecht, Hans Simons, Hans Staudinger, Jacob Marschak, Adolph Lowe, Emil Lederer, Ascoli, Riezler and [Wilhelm Reich](/people/wilhelm-reich/).[^28]

### The Ecole Libre

In 1941 Johnson facilitated the establishment of the Ecole Libre des Hautes Etudes at the New School, which the school's archive calls the Free French School. The school's finding aid says the Ecole Libre offered courses from 1942 to 1946, that it was legally part of the New School, and that its board included Henri Focillon, Jean Perrin, Paul van Zeeland, Jacques Maritain and Gustave Cohen. The school severed the Ecole Libre in June 1947.[^29] The Foundation's records group an Ecole Libre file, titled "Refugee Scholars - New School for Social Research - (French Institute)," under its New School grants.[^30]

Johnson gave an address at the inaugural meeting of the [Institute of World Affairs](/organizations/institute-of-world-affairs/) on November 17, 1943. Transcripts of his address and of Lowe's were printed as the pamphlet *Studies of the Institute of World Affairs: The Aims and Organization of the Institute of World Affairs* (1944).[^31] With Ernest Hamburger he wrote the occasional paper "The Economic Problem of Germany" (1946), which the Institute distributed.[^32] Speier wrote to Johnson on March 5, 1944, a letter that Daniel Bessner cites in connection with the invitation to join the Institute's council.[^33]

### Reporting on the faculty

Rutkoff and Scott write that after 1947 Johnson's anticommunist rhetoric intensified, "and in his private letters he acknowledged that he had been meeting regularly with FBI officials since the 1930s to report on the faculty."[^34] The same history quotes Sidney Hook that on at least one occasion Johnson "wanted to get rid of a Communist Party member" but "delegated it to Clara Mayer," and says that in 1940 Johnson supported the adoption by the [Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science](/organizations/new-school-for-social-research/) of "an explicitly anticommunist clause in its charter" in response to the school's difficulty with the [Department of State](/organizations/state-department/) and immigration authorities.[^34]

Rutkoff and Scott write that a Rockefeller Foundation memorandum "indicated that Johnson had also monitored files of 'enemy aliens' in the early 1940s for the federal district attorney." Their endnote for the passage cites a memorandum of January 27, 1942, in the "Hans Eisler File" of the Rockefeller Foundation Archives, with a letter from Johnson to Urban of December 9, 1948.[^35] In the early 1950s, the same history reports, the school's administration received "inquiries from congressional and Senate committees, the FBI, and numerous individuals."[^36]

### Enemy alien hearing board and the 1942 panel

Johnson's memoir records that after America entered the war he was appointed to an enemy alien hearing board, with Maurice Davidson, chairman, and Joseph Leary Delaney. He writes: "Case after case came before us, well prepared in advance by the FBI. After we had studied the record and had heard the FBI investigators, we would hear the accused."[^37]

In early 1942, Rutkoff and Scott write, Johnson, Hans Staudinger and Alexander Makinsky met with State Department officials in Washington at a meeting Johnson requested after complaining of departmental "high jinks." They spent the day testifying before what the history describes as "a governmental panel comprised of representatives from the FBI, the Visa Division, Naval Intelligence, and the Department of the Army," and Johnson "had to defend himself against charges of heading a 'Communist outfit.'" Rutkoff and Scott add that officials of the Visa Division regarded the creation of the Gaullist Ecole Libre at the New School as dangerous to American policy.[^38]

### Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences

The *Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences* appeared under Seligman as editor-in-chief, with Johnson as associate editor. The title page of volume three, published in 1930, gives that credit.[^39] Bessner writes that Johnson accepted Seligman's offer of the associate editorship in 1927, and that "both the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations contributed $1.25 million to the project, which the Social Science Research Council oversaw."[^40] Rutkoff and Scott name a different pair of funders, the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial and the Russell Sage Foundation, through which Seligman "secured financial support."[^41]

### New York anti-discrimination work

In 1943 Johnson served as vice-chairman of New York State's Commission on Discrimination in Employment. The New School's finding aid says he helped draft and pass the New York Fair Employment Act of 1945, and that Governor Thomas E. Dewey sent him the signing statement and pen.[^42] The New York State Division of Human Rights describes the 1945 measure as the Ives-Quinn Act, which Dewey signed and which prohibited employment discrimination based on race, creed, color and national origin.[^43] In February 1947 Johnson resigned as chairman of the State Committee Against Discrimination in Education because of his duties on the State Commission for a State University.[^44]

### Papers and later years

The New School Archives hold the Alvin Saunders Johnson collection, 6.5 cubic feet dated 1908 to 1973, in four series: biographical, correspondence, subject files and writings. Its correspondence and subject files concern fundraising, a proposed labor college and a Faculty of Retired Professors.[^45] The finding aid places institutional papers from Johnson's New School years at the [Yale University](/organizations/yale-university/) Library, and says that papers from his West Nyack, New York home went to the Love Library at his alma mater, the University of Nebraska, which it places in Omaha. Bessner cites a Johnson collection at the Love Library in Lincoln.[^45][^46] Yale University's Manuscripts and Archives holds the Alvin Saunders Johnson papers (MS 615), 1902 to 1969, 5.75 linear feet in 15 boxes, given by Johnson, Agnes de Lima and Edith Levy in 1967, arranged as correspondence, biographical and subject files, and writings. Its scope note says the papers contain only a very limited amount of material on the New School, the University in Exile, the Ecole Libre and the state commission on discrimination in employment.[^47] Johnson's autobiography, *Pioneer's Progress*, was published in 1952.[^45] He received honorary degrees from Brandeis University in 1957, Hebrew Union College in 1960 and Freie Universität Berlin in 1964.[^42]

[^1]: New School Archives and Special Collections, "Alvin Saunders Johnson collection," NS-01-01-01, biographical note, https://findingaids.archives.newschool.edu/repositories/3/resources/230 (accessed October 9, 2026).
[^2]: "Alvin Johnson," Histories of The New School, https://histories.newschool.edu/node/157 (co-founder in 1918, director in 1922, official retirement in December 1945, death on June 7, 1971 in Upper Nyack, New York).
[^3]: "University in Exile," Histories of The New School, https://histories.newschool.edu/histories/university-exile ($60,000 a year for two years, a faculty of fifteen at $4,000 each).
[^4]: "Dr. Alvin Johnson Of New School Dies," *The New York Times*, June 9, 1971, p. 1, https://www.nytimes.com/1971/06/09/archives/dr-alvin-johnson-of-new-school-dies-dr-alvin-johnson-of-new-school.html (died "Monday night" at Upper Nyack at 96; president emeritus since 1945; founded 1919 with Beard, Dewey, Veblen, Robinson and Mitchell; took his case to Raymond B. Fosdick, president of the Rockefeller Foundation; Foundation "approved the request and assured the financing of 100 emigres").
[^5]: Alvin Johnson, *Pioneer's Progress* (New York: Viking Press, 1952; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1960), p. 167.
[^6]: Peter Rutkoff and William Scott, *New School: A History of the New School for Social Research* (New York: Free Press, 1986), pp. 10 to 11.
[^7]: Rutkoff and Scott, *New School*, p. 21: "ten-year pledges of support amounting to nearly $300,000, much of it from Dorothy Straight."
[^8]: Rutkoff and Scott, *New School*, p. 28: the New Republic's owners "wanted to terminate the New School so that Straight would provide his magazine with more support."
[^9]: Rutkoff and Scott, *New School*, p. 30, on Johnson's April 1922 letter to Dorothy Straight after taking over as director. The letter is cited in the book's note 40.
[^10]: Rutkoff and Scott, *New School*, p. 92: Halle "had pledged the entire sum that Johnson required"; before the gift Johnson "had collected only between $7,000 and $15,000"; Halle "made his fortune in petroleum refining and finance"; Halle's anonymity was kept to avoid discouraging other donors.
[^11]: Johnson, *Pioneer's Progress*, p. 340: Halle's call after a letter Johnson wrote to Seligman; Johnson's answer "Twelve thousand"; Halle: "I am prepared to guarantee the sixty thousand a year for two years, so that you can go ahead at once"; Altschul: "Hiram Halle's signature on a check for a million dollars would be accepted by any bank in New York. But we'll keep his amazing offer under our hats. Nobody will contribute if he knows Halle is ready to carry the whole load."
[^12]: Daniel Morris Bessner, *The Night Watchman: Hans Speier and the Making of the American National Security State* (Duke University dissertation), note 16, on Halle as part owner of the Gulf Oil Company and associated with the Rockefeller Foundation, which spent $1.4 million helping displaced scholars. The New School Archives biographical note for Collection NA-0008-01 also states that Halle was part owner of Gulf Oil company.
[^13]: Daniel Morris Bessner, *The Night Watchman: Hans Speier and the Making of the American National Security State* (Duke University dissertation, 2013), p. 84. https://hdl.handle.net/10161/7101
[^14]: New School Archives and Special Collections, "Hiram Halle home movies of annual barbecue for University in Exile at Pound Ridge," Collection NA-0008-01, biographical note and scope and contents. https://aspace.archives.newschool.edu/repositories/3/resources/256
[^15]: Rutkoff and Scott, *New School*, p. 102: "Beyond these original appointments, Johnson recruited two additional Rockefeller scholars, Italian political scientist Max Ascoli and Austrian Erich Hula"; Hula "originally rejected Johnson's offer"; "Johnson persuaded the Rockefeller Foundation to appoint Hans Simons"; 1934 additions Alfred Kahler, Fritz Lehman, Arthur Feiler and Hans Staudinger.
[^16]: Rutkoff and Scott, *New School*, p. 118: "Ascoli joined the University in Exile in late 1933."
[^17]: Johnson, *Pioneer's Progress*, p. 347: "With Riezler the roster was closed."
[^18]: Rutkoff and Scott, *New School*, p. 146: "The Rockefeller Foundation and Harold Laski of the London School of Economics recommended Strauss to Alvin Johnson."
[^19]: Rutkoff and Scott, *New School*, p. 86: Johnson and the Rockefeller Foundation "had agreed to rescue" a dozen individuals.
[^20]: Rutkoff and Scott, *New School*, p. 91, printed as "Tracy Kittridge, an associate in the Paris office of the Rockefeller Foundation," writing on March 29, 1933.
[^21]: Rutkoff and Scott, *New School*, p. 94: "the Emergency Committee, acting for the Rockefeller Foundation."
[^22]: Rutkoff and Scott, *New School*, p. 95: the Foundation "wished to salvage the most empirical segment of German social science."
[^23]: Rockefeller Archive Center, "The Rockefeller Foundation's Refugee Scholar Program," REsource, https://resource.rockarch.org/story/the-rockefeller-foundations-refugee-scholar-program-world-war-ii-nazi-europe/ (Foundation officers worked with Johnson from 1933; letter from Marc Bloch to Johnson, July 31, 1941, RAC, RG 1.1, Series 200, Box 48, Folder 550).
[^24]: Johnson, *Pioneer's Progress*, pp. 366 to 367: "The president of the Foundation, Raymond Fosdick, whom I regarded as our foremost international educational statesman, would at least hear me. I decided to ask for traveling expenses and a two years' stipend for five scholars"; "five," "fifteen," "twenty-five," and "unless we are prepared to take care of a hundred"; "The trustees had approved and I could go ahead immediately." The statement on expert information about Nazi or Fascist refugees is at p. 369.
[^25]: New York Public Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division, "Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars records, 1933-1945," MssCol 922, biographical note, https://archives.nypl.org/mss/922 (Cohn, Flexner and Stein contacted Duggan in May 1933; Warburg and Gregg served as advisors; Farrand chaired; Murrow served as assistant secretary until 1935).
[^26]: New York Public Library, MssCol 922, scope note: grants for 335 scholars from about 6,000 applicants.
[^27]: Johnson, *Pioneer's Progress*, p. 344: "Stephen Duggan, of the Institute for International Education, invited me to lunch."
[^28]: New York Public Library, MssCol 922, container list: Series II, New School file, 1933-1945, box 148, folders 1 to 12; Series VI, executive committee correspondence, "Johnson, Alvin 1940-1945," box 190, folder 8; Series I.B, Non-Grantees: Riezler (box 107, folder 16), Speier (box 118, folder 17), Ascoli (box 38, folder 46), Colm (box 50, folder 5), Brecht (box 46, folder 36), Simons (box 117, folder 3), Staudinger (box 119, folder 3), Marschak (box 93, folder 52), Lowe (box 91, folder 23), Lederer (box 86, folder 44), Reich (box 105, folder 36).
[^29]: New School Archives and Special Collections, "David Hahn Ecole Libre papers," https://findingaids.archives.newschool.edu/repositories/3/resources/526 (Johnson facilitated the establishment of the school in 1941; courses 1942 to 1946; board members Focillon, Perrin, Van Zeeland, Maritain and Cohen; severed from the New School in June 1947).
[^30]: Rockefeller Archive Center, DIMES catalog, Rockefeller Foundation records, RG 1.1, Series 200, file group "Refugee Scholars - New School for Social Research - (French Institute)," https://dimes.rockarch.org
[^31]: New School Archives and Special Collections, "Studies of the Institute of World Affairs: The Aims and Organization of the Institute of World Affairs, 1944," Institute of World Affairs records, Box 16, Folder 17. https://findingaids.archives.newschool.edu/repositories/3/archival_objects/27156
[^32]: New School Archives and Special Collections, "Institute of World Affairs records," NS-02-16-01, IWA Bibliography (Occasional Papers). https://findingaids.archives.newschool.edu/repositories/3/resources/235
[^33]: Bessner, "The Night Watchman: Hans Speier and the Making of the American National Security State" (PhD diss., Duke University, 2013), p. 164 note 3 (Hans Speier to Alvin Johnson, March 5, 1944, Speier Papers, Box 4, Folder 115). https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/232a76ac-f2d8-4827-99fe-50b3b109fa6c/content
[^34]: Rutkoff and Scott, *New School*, p. 226: "in his private letters he acknowledged that he had been meeting regularly with FBI officials since the 1930s to report on the faculty"; Hook: Johnson "wanted to get rid of a Communist Party member" but "delegated it to Clara Mayer"; 1940 "an explicitly anticommunist clause in its charter." Note 22 (p. 296).
[^35]: Rutkoff and Scott, *New School*, p. 226, text: "A Rockefeller Foundation memorandum indicated that Johnson had also monitored files of 'enemy aliens' in the early 1940s for the federal district attorney." Note 22 (p. 296): "Johnson to Urban (December 9, 1948), JPYU; memorandum (January 27, 1942), Hans Eisler File, Rockefeller Foundation Archives; Sidney Hook, telephone interview with Professor Roy Wortman, Kenyon College (June 20, 1981)." The note names no author for the memorandum.
[^36]: Rutkoff and Scott, *New School*, p. 228: the administration "also received inquiries from congressional and Senate committees, the FBI, and numerous individuals" during the early 1950s.
[^37]: Johnson, *Pioneer's Progress*, p. 370: "After America entered the war I was appointed to an enemy alien hearing board, with Maurice Davidson, chairman, and Joseph Leary Delaney. Case after case came before us, well prepared in advance by the FBI. After we had studied the record and had heard the FBI investigators, we would hear the accused."
[^38]: Rutkoff and Scott, *New School*, p. 135: "In early 1942, Johnson, Hans Staudinger, and Makinsky met with State Department officials in Washington. Johnson, having complained of departmental 'high jinks,' requested the meeting. They spent the day testifying before a governmental panel comprised of representatives from the FBI, the Visa Division, Naval Intelligence, and the Department of the Army"; "Johnson had to defend himself against charges of heading a 'Communist outfit'"; Visa Division officials "regarded the creation of the Gaullist Ecole Libre at the New School, in particular, as dangerous to American policy."
[^39]: *Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences*, vol. 3 (New York: Macmillan, 1930), title page: "Editor-in-Chief Edwin R. A. Seligman, Associate Editor Alvin Johnson." https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofso0000unse_b9t1
[^40]: Bessner, *The Night Watchman*, dissertation text on the encyclopedia and note 14: Johnson accepted Seligman's 1927 offer; "Both the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations contributed $1.25 million to the project, which the Social Science Research Council oversaw." Competing account at note 36.
[^41]: Rutkoff and Scott, *New School*, p. 67: "Seligman secured financial support from the Laura Spelman Rockefeller and Russell Sage foundations."
[^42]: New School Archives and Special Collections, "Alvin Johnson honorary degrees and family photographs," NA.0035.01, https://findingaids.archives.newschool.edu/repositories/3/resources/567 (vice-chairmanship of the New York State Commission on Discrimination in Employment in 1943; the 1945 letter and Dewey's signing pen; honorary degrees from Brandeis University in 1957, Hebrew Union College in 1960 and Freie Universitat Berlin in 1964).
[^43]: New York State Division of Human Rights, "About the Division," https://dhr.ny.gov/about (Governor Thomas E. Dewey signed the Ives-Quinn Anti-Discrimination Act in 1945, prohibiting employment discrimination based on race, creed, color and national origin).
[^44]: "Dr. Alvin Johnson, Chairman of the State Committee Against Discrimination in Education," *The Omaha Guide*, February 8, 1947, p. 2. https://nebnewspapers.unl.edu/lccn/sn93062828/1947-02-08/ed-1/seq-2/
[^45]: New School Archives and Special Collections, "Alvin Saunders Johnson collection," NS-01-01-01, abstract, arrangement, biographical note and related materials (see note 1).
[^46]: Bessner, *The Night Watchman*, note 15: Alvin Johnson Papers, Archives and Special Collections, Love Library, University of Nebraska at Lincoln, Box 47, folder "Graduate Faculty-University in Exile."
[^47]: Yale University Library, Manuscripts and Archives, "Alvin Saunders Johnson papers," MS 615, https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/12/resources/3846 (accessed October 9, 2026).


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