Donald Barr

Donald Barr (August 2, 1921 to February 5, 2004) was an American educator and writer. He served with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in the Second World War, ran the Science Honors Program at Columbia University's School of Engineering, was headmaster of the Dalton School in New York City from 1964 to 1974 and of the Hackley School in Tarrytown, New York from 1975, and sat on the federal National Council on Educational Research. He wrote a book on American education, two science-fiction novels and children's science books. He was the father of William Barr, who served as attorney general from 1991 to 1993 and again from 2019 to 2020.¹² He is a different man from Donald Barrios, a Miami figure of a similar name.

Columbia and the Office of Strategic Services

Barr was born in Manhattan, majored in mathematics and anthropology at Columbia College and graduated in 1941. He went into the Army and served with the OSS in Washington, D.C., and Europe.¹² Marie Brenner wrote in Vanity Fair that "during the war, Barr joined the OSS" and afterward taught English at Columbia.³ The CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence review of his son's memoir, One Damn Thing After Another (William Morrow, 2022), refers to the elder Barr's "brief service in the Research and Analysis Branch of the Office of Strategic Services during World War II."⁴ The Gale reference notice on his death says he "joined the Army as part of the OSS," without dates.⁵

The National Archives holds OSS personnel files in Record Group 226, Entry 224. Its name database, dated December 23, 2010, lists a "Barr, Donald" with a T-5 serial number 36647447 and, on the following line, a Pfc serial number 39227927, in box 38.⁶ The database gives no middle initial, birthplace or unit, and records found do not establish whether either serial belongs to the Columbia graduate.

After the war Barr returned to Columbia, taught in the English department, and received a master's degree from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1950 in English and comparative literature while completing course requirements for a doctorate.² The Gale notice gives the master's year as 1951 and says he completed coursework without writing a dissertation.⁵ He also taught field-work courses in sociology and political science at the School of Engineering. In 1955 the Engineering School asked him to oversee its efforts to identify promising elementary and secondary science students, and he moved into the Engineering Dean's Office.² The Gale notice dates his service as assistant to the dean of the School of Engineering from 1956 to 1959, followed by about five years as assistant dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science.⁵

Science Honors Program

The Columbia School of Engineering announced the Science Honors Program on June 10, 1958: sixty selected high-school students from the New York area would attend Saturday classes and conferences on the Morningside Heights campus, taught by university faculty. The program ran under Columbia's Joint Program for Technical Education, which had been set up in 1956 with funds from the Hebrew Technical Institute of New York, and the institute made an additional grant of $25,000 to staff and equip it. John R. Dunning, dean of the School of Engineering, explained the program at the announcement. The advisory board included the anthropologist Margaret Mead, the educator Paul F. Brandwein and Barr, who was listed as director.⁷

In September 1959 Consulting Engineer reported that the program had planned for 60 students, received about 220 nominees, and enlarged the first class to 75 and then to 150 after the Fund for the Advancement of Education, a Ford Foundation subsidiary, matched the Hebrew Technical Institute grant. Barr, quoted as director, said of the intelligence tests used in selection, "We do not put a great deal of emphasis on the I.Q. tests, however," and described the first-semester lectures as ranging from "the genetics of marine fungi to switching theory."⁸ By 1963 Nature and Science, the magazine of the American Museum of Natural History, listed him on its national board of editors as director of the Science Honors Program.⁹

Barr became assistant dean of the Engineering faculty in 1959. In 1963 the National Science Foundation, which had supported the Science Honors Program, asked him to administer its Cooperative College-School Program, which he did until he became headmaster at Dalton the following year.² The 2004 New York Times obituary says the program he established "served as a model for similar programs elsewhere administered by the National Science Foundation."¹

In an October 30, 1976 paper for the National Institute of Education, Barr recalled that roughly seventeen years earlier he had been directing a study of underachievement among high-ability students in New York City public high schools under a grant from a middle-sized foundation, and at the same time "a massive enrichment program for gifted high-school students at Columbia University" that had used up "its original grant from a very small foundation." He wrote that when he asked the middle-sized foundation for $50,000 for the enrichment program, its executive director declined and told him, "If you wanted to found a symphony orchestra of chimpanzees, I could get you $100,000 tomorrow."¹⁰

Writing

Who Pushed Humpty Dumpty?, a book on American education, was first published in 1971 by Atheneum Publishers, with Scribner also listed as a publisher.¹¹ The 1972 printing carries the subtitle Dilemmas in American Education Today. In it Barr wrote that "in the spring of 1964" Dalton "hired me as headmaster."¹² The SF Encyclopedia gives the title as Who Pushed Humpty Dumpty, or The Education of a Headmaster.¹³ The Dalton School Archives catalogues the book among publications by Dalton staff, and also an article by Barr, "Sex, Love, and Modern Education," in Columbia College Today for fall 1967.¹⁴

Space Relations: A Slightly Gothic Interplanetary Tale was published in 1973 in New York by Charterhouse, a division of David McKay Company, with copyright in Barr's name and Library of Congress catalog card number 73-79958. A Fawcett Crest paperback followed, first printed in February 1975. The dedication reads "To MAB. with thirty years' love," and is followed by a stanza from Richard Wagner's opera Tannhäuser and two other epigraphs, one from Alfred North Whitehead on human sacrifice and slavery.¹⁵ The protagonist, John Armbruster Craig, is a 38-year-old official of the Extraterrestrial Service whose physiological record is held by the Health Executive's computer in Bethesda, with an identifier branded on his forearm (pp. 7-8). He is being examined before a mission to the planet Kossar to negotiate a treaty, and he had earlier spent two years as a slave in the mines of Treghast (pp. 11-13). Later chapters show people taken from ships listed by sex, approximate age and ship at a slave compound and sold at auction (pp. 38-39, 49-50). A woman addressed as Lady Morgan tells Craig she will give him the name Smitty and that he is "attached to my person" (excerpt on the front leaf).¹⁵ The SF Encyclopedia describes the novel as a space opera with literary analogues to its plot and lists a second novel, A Planet in Arms (Fawcett, 1981).¹³

Wayne Madsen, writing in September 2019, read the novel as a portrait of sexual slavery and as a parallel to the residences of Jeffrey Epstein in New York, New Mexico, Paris and the Virgin Islands, and read the Wagner epigraph as an admiration for fascism. He described the elder Barr as "influential in hiring" Epstein.¹⁶

Barr's children's nonfiction includes The How and Why Wonder Book of Atomic Energy (1961) and The How and Why Wonder Book of Building (1964).⁵ The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association's notice adds that he wrote textbooks in science and mathematics while at Columbia.¹⁷

Dalton School, 1964 to 1974

Time reported on April 5, 1971 that "the board of trustees picked a stubborn new headmaster in 1964," a former assistant dean at Columbia's engineering school who "arrived at Dalton with a dim view of 'orthodox' progressive education's emphasis on emotional development." He carried out trustee decisions to make the all-girl high school coeducational and to more than double the school to 1,000 students, sent his own four sons to Horace Mann, added tests to supplement written evaluations, wrote on teenage sex, and tried to ban blue jeans and long hair on boys. In 1970 he expelled five sixth-graders, and at a November 1970 board meeting a faction of trustees asked for his removal; an evaluation committee was named and, two months later, the board voted unanimously to keep him. In March 1971 supporters circulated a 21-page memorandum naming the PTA president as a plotter against him, and a mail poll of parents run by the Honest Ballot Association went 435 to 300 against the PTA president.¹⁸ The Dalton School Archives holds a personnel series for Barr covering 1964 to 1972, and a folder of the 1971 Time items, a parent's letter of May 24, 1971 and "Education: Notes from a Controversialist" (August 1971).¹⁴ Brenner reported that a 1971 New York magazine article, "The Parents' Revolt at Dalton," covered the dispute.³

On February 20, 1974 the New York Times reported, under the headline "Barr Quits Dalton School Post, Charging Trustees' Interference," that Barr had resigned "in protest of what he considers the trustee's interference with his leadership." In a letter to faculty and parents the day before he wrote, "I am not comfortable with the definition of board-head relations that I see becoming current in schools everywhere." The board said the resignation "was not requested and not expected." Richard Ravitch, president of the board, said, "The issue is the prerogatives of the board and the headmaster." The article recalled that "a faction of the former board and some of the parents sought his ouster in 1971," and reported that in January 1974 the school had dismissed clerical and administrative staff and announced that more than half a dozen teaching positions would be eliminated in the fall, with the board having hired an outside committee to study the school. Barr said he would remain until June 7. Enrollment was 1,254.¹⁹

Marie Brenner, interviewed by NPR in December 2019, said that Barr "began running afoul of many of the parents at the Dalton School because he became progressively more conservative," that parents and trustees mounted "an immense pushback against what many of them called the Captain Queeg who was running the Dalton School," and that his son watched him being "criticized quite publicly in The New York Times, in New York magazine, in the early 1970s." Of the end of his tenure she said, "he was allowed legally to resign."²⁰ In Vanity Fair she quoted Ravitch: "I brought in the dean of the Harvard School of Education and the head of Teachers College to evaluate Barr... I fired him. It took years to get him out, but we did it." Brenner wrote that Barr announced his resignation "as part of an arrangement" and that the Dalton yearbook after his departure said, "The whole of Dalton owes a great debt to Donald Barr."³

The 2004 obituary says his "sometimes stormy tenure ended in 1974 with his departure after disputes with the trustees over budget priorities and his disciplinarian approach to substance abuse."¹ The Dalton archives hold the issues of the student newspaper, The Daltonian, of February 6 and March 14, 1974; the catalogue entry for the March 14 issue says it covers Barr's resignation.¹⁴ Peter Branch, then upper school director, was appointed interim headmaster; his appointment began July 1, 1974, and Barr's contract expired June 30, according to what Branch told Thomas Volscho.²¹

In his deposition before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on August 18, 2025, William Barr was asked whether his father's role as Dalton headmaster had been a consideration in the Ethics Office analysis of his continued involvement in the Epstein matters. He answered: "Actually, I don't even think... I don't know whether I was aware of that at that time. Obviously not. It's not pertinent at all."²²

Jeffrey Epstein's hiring

The school's own newspaper is the earliest record. Volscho reported in the Daily Beast on July 12, 2019 that the September 1974 issue of The Daltonian announced Epstein had joined the mathematics department and would also teach physics, that Epstein's arrival followed the summer of 1974, and that Epstein later confirmed in a deposition that he taught there from 1974 to 1976. Volscho wrote that reports of a 1973 start are incorrect because the 1973-74 yearbook does not mention him, and that Barr resigned in February 1974, "seven months before Jeffrey Epstein began teaching there that fall." He wrote that "it is possible that Donald Barr may have hired Epstein, if he made personnel decisions long in advance," that The Daltonian showed the school lost four mathematics teachers before the 1974-75 year, and that the school may therefore have hired Epstein "in part, out of an urgent need to fill vacant positions." In an update Volscho added that Branch did not recall hiring Epstein and was relatively certain that Barr, or possibly the head of the mathematics department, had hired him, because hiring decisions were typically made in the spring; Branch also said Barr liked to hire unconventional teachers.²¹

The New York Times reported on July 12, 2019 (Mike Baker and Amy Julia Harris) that Epstein, from Brooklyn, "was just 21 when he joined the faculty at Dalton, arriving without a college degree," and that the student newspaper reported in September 1974 that he was starting as a math and physics teacher. The article states: "In February 1974, Mr. Barr had announced that he was resigning as headmaster, protesting the meddling by the board of trustees, but that he would stay on until the end of the school year. It is unclear whether Mr. Barr hired Mr. Epstein during that time." It quotes Susan Semel, a Dalton social studies teacher from the 1960s into the 1980s and the author of a history of the school: "Barr didn't care about credentials as long as you were interesting and knew your stuff." It reports that Dalton officials did not respond to requests for comment.²³ Semel told NPR in July 2019 that Barr made several unconventional hires, while NPR wrote that it was "unclear if he hired Epstein," and that "Donald Barr would hire young people, and not necessarily young people who had a lot of credentials."²⁴

Brenner wrote in Vanity Fair that for his teaching staff Barr "brought in photographers, White Russian aristocrats, anti-Castro Cuban grandees, and a group of gifted college dropouts, including one Jeffrey Epstein," and that William Barr "recently claimed he hadn't made the Dalton-Epstein connection until he read about it in the press."³ Calder McHugh, writing for Yahoo Finance on July 13, 2019 from anonymous former students, stated that "Donald Barr, Dalton's headmaster and father of Attorney General Bill Barr, hired Epstein to teach math and science," placing Epstein at the school "in the early 1970s" for about two years, with appearances in Dalton yearbooks of 1975 and 1976; the article says the school did not respond to a request for comment.²⁵

On Epstein's departure, Branch told the Times that Epstein "was a young teacher who didn't come up to snuff... So, ultimately, he was asked to leave," and that he had no recollection of complaints about conduct.²³ In the update to Volscho's article, Branch said that mathematics and science faculty had asked him what he was going to do about Epstein, that his teaching had not improved over the previous year, and that he then informed Epstein it was time to move on. Volscho also wrote that Epstein told the school he was not returning after the 1975-76 year, and that Edward Jay Epstein had been told by investigators from Kroll, retained by L Brands, that Epstein had faked his resume to obtain the Dalton job.²¹

Hackley School and federal advisory work

The 2004 obituary says that "the next year" Barr became headmaster of Hackley, "where he soon dismissed more than two dozen students for disruptive conduct and poor academic performance."¹ Columbia College Today also dates the move to the year after his departure from Dalton.² The Gale notice says he received stronger parental support at Hackley and strengthened programs in academic subjects and the arts.⁵ The New York Times reported on March 13, 1977, in "Barr Puts His Stamp on Hackley," that he had run a private school "in the cramped confines of Manhattan before becoming headmaster of the Hackley School on an 83-acre campus in Tarrytown."²⁶

At the National Institute of Education's November 17-19, 1976 Curriculum Development Conference in Washington, the conference report records Barr's warning to the institute about its wish for synthesis: "Don't treat our statements as data!"²⁷ His paper of October 30, 1976 for the institute's Curriculum Development Task Force, signed from Hackley School, set out two models of sponsorship. The first, the "Culture Ministry" approach, he identified with "a congeries of governmental agencies, major foundations, big test publishers, big textbook publishers" and a network of consultants, in which projects are designed "de haut en bas." He recommended that the institute separate the initiation and funding of projects, limit grant size, and avoid "incursions into or arrangements with the private sector."¹⁰ The February 8, 1977 task force report on the institute's role lists him among those consulted,²⁸ and a 1977 National School Boards Association report on career education carries his contribution under the heading "Beware of implementation which destroys the ideals."²⁹

President Ronald Reagan announced on May 28, 1982 his intention to nominate Barr, "headmaster of the Hackley School in Tarrytown, N.Y.," to the National Council on Educational Research, to succeed Helen S. Astin for the remainder of a term expiring in 1982 and then a full term.³⁰ On December 11, 1985 Reagan reappointed him for a term expiring September 30, 1988; the announcement describes him as then headmaster of Hackley and gives his birth as August 2, 1921, in New York City.³¹

Death

Barr died on February 5, 2004, of heart failure, at a hospital in Langhorne, Pennsylvania. He was 82. His wife had died in 2001, and he was survived by four sons, among them William, and eight grandchildren.²¹⁷ The New York Times published an obituary on February 10, 2004, headed "Donald Barr, 82, Headmaster And Science Honors Educator."¹