Max Ascoli

Max Ascoli (1898 to 1978) was an Italian anti-fascist jurist and political philosopher who left Italy in 1931 on a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship, joined the University in Exile at the New School for Social Research, and served as dean of its Graduate Faculty. He was the first president of the Mazzini Society, held a post in the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs under Nelson Rockefeller in 1942, and from 1949 to 1968 was editor and, with his wife Marion Rosenwald Ascoli, owner of the biweekly The Reporter.¹²

Birth, arrest and exile, 1898 to 1931

Max Raoul Ascoli was born in Ferrara on June 25, 1898, the son of Enrico Ascoli, a surveyor who became a merchant, and Adriana Finzi. He graduated in law at the University of Ferrara in July 1920 with a thesis on the legal philosophy of Benedetto Croce, studied in Rome under Giorgio Del Vecchio, and in 1925 joined Gaetano Salvemini and Carlo Rosselli in the clandestine sheet Non mollare. His first teaching post was in philosophy of law and international law at the University of Camerino in 1926 to 1927.¹ He later called Ferrara the "cradle of Fascism."²

The accounts of his arrest differ. The Senate archive biography by Renato Camurri places it in April 1928, in an investigation into the group Giovane Italia, and says the admonition measure had to be revoked before he could sit the examination for the libera docenza, after which he taught public law at the University of Cagliari in 1929 to 1930.¹ A Boston University profile states that he was arrested in 1928 after his name was found in the address book of another intellectual charged with clandestine political activities.² Ascoli's own account, written in 1954, gives the date as April 30, 1928, says he and other Italian anti-fascist university professors were arrested "for no other reason than a summons to repent or else," that he was held about three weeks, and that on release he was asked to write a letter to Benito Mussolini announcing his conversion to the Fascist faith. He wrote that he refused, was kept under strict police supervision until he left Italy in September 1931, and that in the spring of 1931, as the only remaining member of his university who refused to join the Fascist Association of University Teachers, he was offered a Rockefeller fellowship by the Foundation's representative in Italy, Luigi Einaudi.³ Camurri gives the arrival in New York as October 1931, with a research project on the crisis of democracy in America, and records that the fellowship was extended through 1932, with five months at Harvard University, where he formed close ties with Felix Frankfurter.¹

Isabelle Richet, reviewing the intellectual biography by Davide Grippa for the Primo Levi Center, places his early activism among the circle of Piero Gobetti, Salvemini and Rosselli, describes his break with Rosselli's movement Giustizia e Libertà in the early 1930s, and writes that he was very close to Frankfurter and Louis Brandeis, who became his mentors and introduced him to influential Jewish networks in the United States.⁴

University in Exile, 1933 to 1949

Camurri writes that Frankfurter put Ascoli in touch with Alvin Johnson, and that documents in the Rockefeller Foundation archives show Johnson had already read Ascoli's work and been impressed; Johnson placed him on the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science.¹ Peter Rutkoff and William Scott write that Johnson recruited "two additional Rockefeller scholars, Italian political scientist Max Ascoli and Austrian Erich Hula," and that Ascoli joined the University in Exile in late 1933.⁵ Daniel Bessner records that Johnson hoped to bring over Ascoli, Rudolf Littauer and Werner Hegemann, and that all three joined the New School; Ascoli's article "Realism versus the Constitution" appeared in the first volume of Social Research in 1934.⁶ The Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars kept a file on him in its non-grantee series, for the applicants it did not aid, for 1933 to 1935 and for 1939 to 1943.⁷

Camurri lists his books of the period as Intelligence in Politics (1936), Political and Economic Democracy (1937, edited with Fritz Lehmann) and Fascism for Whom? (written with Arthur Feiler), and states that he was the only Italian given significant responsibilities on the Graduate Faculty and in Social Research.¹ Richet gives 1940 as the year of his United States citizenship.⁴

School and Society reported on March 16, 1940 that Ascoli had been elected dean of the graduate faculty of political and social science at the New School, "succeeding Frieda Wunderlich, whose term expires next fall."⁸ The American Teacher of May 1941 describes him as the dean of the Graduate Faculty.⁹ In 1954 he wrote that he joined the Graduate Faculty two years after the fellowship and "Later I became Dean of the Faculty."³ Laura Fermi writes that he had been a professor at the New School since 1933 and that Franco Modigliani obtained a fellowship with his help.¹⁰ Camurri writes that he gave up the academic career in 1949 to devote himself to The Reporter.¹

Ascoli was involved in the initial planning, fund-raising and faculty research supervision of the Institute of World Affairs, the New School research unit, until Adolph Lowe became its director of research in 1942.¹¹

Marriage to Marion Rosenwald

In 1940 Ascoli married Marion Rosenwald Stern, a daughter of Julius Rosenwald, chairman of Sears, Roebuck and Company. She had been married to Alfred K. Stern, a housing specialist, and they were divorced in 1936.¹² Camurri writes that the marriage gave him contacts at the highest levels of the political and administrative establishment.¹

Mazzini Society

Camurri names Ascoli among the founders of the Mazzini Society in 1939, with Roberto Bolaffio, Renato Poggioli, Michele Cantarella, Salvemini and Lionello Venturi, and gives his presidency as 1940 to 1943, adding that Ascoli and his family contributed substantially to the support of the organization.¹ Fermi dates the society's creation to 1940 and writes that Ascoli was appointed its first president and Salvemini its honorary president; that in early 1941 it was broadcasting from Boston to Italy; that it began the weekly Nazioni Unite in March 1942; and that its political contacts with the American government "were not extensive and, at least at the beginning, limited to the Intelligence Service." She also writes that he was named president in 1940 and "the following year resigned" because the society was in New York while his wartime duties required him in Washington.¹⁰ Richet, summarizing Grippa, calls him one of the leaders of the society and an agent of the State Department during the war.⁴

The Communist monthly Lo Stato Operaio reported in June and July 1942 that at a congress of the society a proposal from the Republican group, to take the initiative in a wider front of anti-fascist action without exclusion of any political tendency, was rejected by 627 votes to 238.¹³ The same account gives Ascoli, as president, telling the congress that before the American government "any rapprochement with the Communists would be extremely harmful" (in the periodical's Italian, "qualsiasi avvicinamento ai comunisti sarebbe estremamente nocivo").¹³ That account thus has him presiding in mid-1942, the year after the resignation Fermi describes and within the 1940 to 1943 presidency Camurri gives. The article also gives the society's total membership, by agreement with its leadership, as exactly 627 in the United States, and has Augusto Bellanca saying at the congress that all the society's successes with the American authorities depended on its reputation as liberals untainted by extremist infiltration.¹³

Thomas E. Mahl reports that the secret "BSC Account" of British Security Coordination stated that BSC had close ties with the Italian-American Mazzini Society headed by Ascoli, and quotes a July 1941 report by Sydney Morrell of the Special Operations Executive that a subsidy had been paid to the Mazzini Society for Italian broadcasts from the Boston radio station WRUL.¹⁴ Mahl also writes that Ascoli was one of the donors listed by Mark Chadwin as particularly generous to Fight for Freedom, a committee Mahl describes as a British intelligence front, and that Ascoli "was also working for British intelligence through his Italian-American Mazzini Society."¹⁴ The Princeton University finding aid for the Fight for Freedom, Inc. records lists a correspondence folder "Ascoli, Max, 1941."¹⁵

Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, 1942

Camurri lists among Ascoli's institutional affiliations of the late 1930s and early 1940s the Bureau of Latin America Relations, the Inter-American Affairs office of Nelson Rockefeller, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Council for Democracy and the Committee for a National Trade Policy.¹ Fermi states that at the time of his resignation from the Mazzini presidency he was associate director of cultural relations in the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs.¹⁰

Released minutes and memoranda of the Interdepartmental Committee on Foreign Nationality Problems, filed in the Central Intelligence Agency reading room under an Office of Strategic Services heading, record Ascoli at the committee's weekly meetings, convened by Adolf A. Berle, Assistant Secretary of State, at the State Department from February to April 1942. A memorandum of the Coordinator of Information (the predecessor agency of the OSS) by DeWitt C. Poole to John C. Wiley, dated February 11, 1942, names "Mr. Nelson Rockefeller, Dr. Max Ascoli and Mr. Wallace K. Harrison of the Office of the Coordinator for Latin American Relations" among those present, and Poole's memorandum of February 18, 1942 lists "Dr. Ascoli, Associate Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs." Berle's letter of February 27, 1942 to the Secretary of War gives the CIAA members as "Mr. N. A Rockefeller; Mr. Wallace K. Harrison; Dr. Ascoli." A Foreign Nationalities Branch position report of March 11, 1942 records that, in connection with a report on Greek politics in the Western Hemisphere, cooperation was being established with "Dr. Ascoli, Associate Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs."¹⁶ The minutes list him as CIAA representative at the sixth meeting (March 11, with Rockefeller and Harrison), the seventh (March 18), the ninth (April 15) and the tenth (April 29).¹⁷

The March 11 minutes record that Ascoli reported, on information from "Mr. Romualdi, a representative of the Mazzini Society just returned from South America," that perhaps 1,500 anti-Fascist Italians might be recruited there for an anti-Fascist Italian legion, that interest was most intense in Uruguay, and that a cable be sent to the embassy in Montevideo about a "Garibaldi Legion" recruiting in Uruguay and Argentina. A Coordinator of Information memorandum to Colonel William J. Donovan of the same date lists Rockefeller, Ascoli and Harrison among those present, and the same memorandum records Ascoli describing Salvemini's skepticism about the number of probable recruits for an Italian legion as "undoubtedly excessive" and suggesting that a small Italian cadre be formed in the United States and sent to Africa as "missionaries." At the April 15 meeting, "Dr. Ascoli for CIAA" referred to the problem of Mexicans in the southwest and offered the assistance of his organization, and Berle suggested that Cramer of the President's Committee on Fair Employment Practice and Ascoli meet with Jonathan Daniels of the Office of Civilian Defense to work out plans on the "color" problem.¹⁷

Hugh Wilford writes that during the war Ascoli "worked alongside Nelson Rockefeller, John Hay Whitney, and C. D. Jackson," although Jackson never warmed to him.¹⁸

The Reporter, 1949 to 1968

The June 21, 1949 issue of The Reporter lists Ascoli as "Editor & Publisher," says the magazine was published every other Tuesday by Fortnightly Publishing Company, a limited partnership, and lists Douglass Cater on the staff.¹⁹ By December 1955 the masthead gives Ascoli as editor and Harlan Cleveland as publisher, with The Reporter Magazine Company at 136 East 57th Street; in 1961 he is "Editor and Publisher," with Cater as Washington editor, and the company at 660 Madison Avenue.²⁰²¹ Fermi writes that Ascoli wrote an editorial for each issue, decided policy and chose authors, and that the magazine's existence depended on "the never-sufficiently-eulogized assistance of American money."¹⁰

Wilford writes that The Reporter had "intimate ties to the U.S. intelligence community," that there is no evidence Ascoli received covert payments "in the same manner as" the editor of The New Leader, "although this is perhaps not surprising, given the apparent destruction of The Reporter's financial records," and that Ascoli had "conspicuous access to wealth" through his wife. Wilford identifies Philip Horton and Douglass Cater as ex-OSS officers who kept their intelligence connections, states that Horton served briefly as the CIA's first station chief in Paris before joining Time and then The Reporter as Ascoli's second in command, and that Horton used contacts with Donovan, Allen Dulles and James Jesus Angleton to enhance foreign coverage. Wilford adds that Cater helped found the United States National Student Association and later served in the Lyndon B. Johnson White House, and that The Reporter had ties to the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the American Committee on United Europe, the National Committee for a Free Europe and the Vietnam Lobby.¹⁸

A CIA memorandum dated March 19, 1952 concerns "The China Lobby" by Charles Christian Wertenbaker, written for The Reporter. Its author, an assistant to the Director, reports that Wertenbaker invited him to review the piece before publication, and that the text would go to Philip Horton, assistant editor, who would edit it. The memorandum says the piece ran to 30,000 to 35,000 words in two installments beginning in early April 1952, and that the magazine "presumably" was building a promotional campaign around it. Wertenbaker had notified Ascoli, "editor and publisher," that he could not devote any more time to the piece.²²

Hans Renders, reviewing Elke van Cassel's history of the magazine, writes that the Reporter, against the prevailing anticommunism of the period, attacked the witch hunt of Joseph McCarthy, and that it kept alive the American tradition of investigative journalism through the conformist 1950s.²³

Senator Bridges, 1954

On August 19, 1954 Senator Styles Bridges attacked The Reporter in a Senate speech (Congressional Record, pages 14472 to 14480) after the magazine's July 20 article "Senator Styles Bridges and His Far-flung Constituents." Ascoli's reply, inserted in the Congressional Record of September 3 by Senator Herbert H. Lehman (pages A6583 to A6585), states that Bridges accused him of ingratitude to the country that gave him refuge and questioned his financial honesty, and that Bridges said he had been "several times jailed" in Italy for "socialistic activities." Ascoli answered that he had been jailed once, in 1928. On the financial charge, Bridges had referred to a loan of $4,600,000 from the Export-Import Bank; Ascoli replied that at the end of 1944 he had started a nonprofit corporation, Handicraft Development, Inc., to help Italian handicraft producers export to the United States, that the Bank then offered the Italian government a loan administered by a company, the Compagnia Nazionale Artigiana, and that William McChesney Martin, chairman of the Bank, wrote him on December 3, 1947 that Handicraft Development should subscribe part of the company's capital and be represented on its board. The reply adds that Senators Lyndon Johnson and Richard Russell had expressed sympathy with Bridges when he attacked the magazine.³

Allen Dulles and the American Committee on United Europe

Richard Aldrich describes the American Committee on United Europe (ACUE) as formed to support Winston Churchill and the European Movement, and as officially incorporated in February 1949. William J. Donovan was its chairman, Dulles its vice-chairman, and Thomas W. Braden, a former OSS officer, its executive director, with day-to-day administration in Braden's hands. Aldrich reports Braden's assertion in the 1980s that ACUE funds originated with the CIA, and writes that the 1962 Oxford thesis of F. X. Rebattet, son of the European Movement's secretary-general George Rebattet, "confirms that most ACUE funds originated with the CIA."²⁴

David Barnby, drawing on that 1962 Oxford thesis on the European Movement, writes that ACUE had a membership of 380 in 1950 and lists, among 29 media figures, "Dr. Max Ascoli, publisher of (The Reporter)."²⁵ Wilford lists the American Committee on United Europe among the Agency fronts with which The Reporter had ties.¹⁸

A copy of a February 7, 1958 letter from the chairman of the President's Committee on Scientists and Engineers to Dulles, then Director of Central Intelligence, thanks him for addressing the Conference on America's Human Resources at Yale University and encloses the list of participants, which includes "Mr. Max Ascoli, Editor and Publisher, The Reporter."²⁶ The 1968 closing file of The Reporter in the Ascoli papers indexes a photocopy of a typed letter from Dulles, dated May 27, among letters from friends of Ascoli expressing regret at the closing.²⁷

Fortnightly Corporation and the Clarksburg television station, 1959 to 1963

In an application filed with the Federal Communications Commission on March 21, 1963 for assignment of the license of television station WBOY-TV, Clarksburg, West Virginia, from Rust Craft Broadcasting Company to Northern West Virginia Television Broadcasting Company, the published notice lists the officers of the purchaser as including Max Ascoli, vice president and director, and Marion R. Ascoli, vice president and director, with Nathan W. Levin as president, treasurer and director. It states that Fortnightly Corporation was the sole stockholder of the purchaser, that Max Ascoli and Marion R. Ascoli were vice presidents and directors of Fortnightly, and that "The stockholders of Fortnightly Corporation are: Max Ascoli, Marion R. Ascoli, and Nathan W. Levin."²⁸

The brief of the appellants, the Citizens TV Protest Committee and Clarksburg Publishing Company, in their appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit against the Commission's approval, states that Fortnightly owned and operated community antenna (cable) systems in Clarksburg and Fairmont, West Virginia; that in March 1959 it had bought the stock of Schwager-Wood Corporation of Portland, Oregon, a manufacturer of electrical switches used mainly by public utilities, which became a division of Fortnightly and was later divested; and that Fortnightly urged approval of the sale on the grounds that it was familiar with the area, that pending litigation between Rust Craft and Fortnightly would be resolved, and that acquisition of WBOY "would give Fortnightly, owner and publisher of the Reporter Magazine, an additional medium for public discussion of national affairs."²⁸

Closing, 1968

In April 1968 the Wall Street Journal reported that The Reporter would cease publication with its June 13 issue. Circulation had risen to 210,000 in the final half of 1967, from 172,000 five years earlier, while advertising had fallen to 401 pages in 1967 from 843 pages in 1963. The magazine had run a deficit in each of its nineteen years, and the deficits "have been met by" Ascoli and his wife Marion, "who are sole owners." The Journal described the magazine as having drifted rightward and as one of a handful of national magazines with a hawkish stand on the Vietnam war. Some features and two of its 54 employees were taken over by Harper's Magazine, and Ascoli was to contribute an essay each month to Harper's.²⁹

The index of names for the 1968 closing letters includes McGeorge Bundy, Henry Kissinger, Adolf Berle, Walt Whitman Rostow, Theodore H. White, William Rosenwald, Paul Douglas and John Dos Passos, as well as Dulles.²⁷ Ascoli died in New York on January 1, 1978.¹

Papers

Ascoli's papers are held at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University, whose Special Collections keep the editorial files of The Reporter.² The Italian Senate's historical archive holds a federated description of a "Max Ascoli Collections" fonds with the Gotlieb Center as custodian, listed at 209 boxes. Its Reporter series includes a historical file of 1947 to 1950, editorial correspondence from 1949 to about 1968, killed manuscripts, libel files, letters to the editor and a closing file. Its personal series contains correspondence from 1934 to 1978 and thematic files on institutions with which Ascoli worked.³⁰