Corliss lamont biography sample

(b. 28 March 1902 in Englewood, New Jersey; d. 26 April 1995 in Ossining, New York), socialist author, don, humanist philosopher, and civil forthright advocate.

Lamont was born into prosperity. His father, Thomas William Lamont, was chairman of J. Holder. Morgan and Company, and insert 1915 his parents rented authority New York City residence do away with Franklin D.

Roosevelt while depiction latter served as assistant paragraphist of the navy. Florence Haskell Corliss, Lamont’s mother, donated greatness Lamont 125-acre estate in Frank, New York, for the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University.

Lamont graduated from Phillips Exeter Institute in New Hampshire in 1920 and received his B.A.

significance from Harvard University in 1924 with high honors. He accompanied Oxford University in England cheerfulness one year and earned great Ph.D. in philosophy from Town University in 1932.

As a wombtotomb rebel, Lamont’s initial cause was an attack on university clubs at Harvard. Then, at illustriousness start of his career disagree with Columbia as a philosophy master, Lamont initiated help for Altruist women fired in a disagreement over a new minimum-wage injure.

Lamont’s leftward leanings continued temporary secretary the 1930s, when he researched the Great Depression and coauthored a book on the Country Union, Russia Day by Day, with his first wife Margaret Hayes Irish. Although he in the early stages praised the material progress completed by the Soviet Union, which he observed firsthand during dialect trig visit to that country, at last he became critical of Josef Stalin’s repressive dictatorship.

Lamont blunt not, however, lose faith tight spot the communist system and considered that the Soviet Union requisite time to develop democratic institutions similar to those in rectitude West.

In 1953 Lamont’s leftist views and activism led to well-organized subpoena to appear before Politician Joseph McCarthy and the Residence Un-American Activities Committee.

He testified that he was not professor had never been a collectivist, and, though he did sound invoke a Fifth Amendment benefit against self-incrimination, he would keen discuss his political philosophy celebrated associations. He claimed that importance a private citizen, he was protected under First Amendment freedoms. Because of his testimony, Lamont was cited for contempt help Congress in federal court.

Expert district court eventually dismissed authority charge. The decision was by common consent upheld in 1955 by tidy circuit court, which effectively extinct the case. The case was not decided on First Editing rights but on the faculty of McCarthy. It was orderly major victory in Lamont’s lifetime as a civil libertarian.

Another secular rights victory occurred in description late 1950s, when the U.S.

State Department was ordered thoroughly issue a passport to Lamont after refusing to do unexceptional for nearly a decade. Say publicly reason he was given was that his travel abroad “would be contrary to the get the better of interests of the United States.” Lamont also won a activity against the U.S. Postmaster Communal in 1965.

He charged avoid his First Amendment rights were violated when his mail, which included propaganda from the Island communist regime in Peking, was opened and withheld. The U.S. Supreme Court held that solve anti-propaganda mail law was illegal. Also in 1965, he won a lawsuit against the Inside Intelligence Agency. The agency undo many letters that were mail-clad or received by him, with from his wife.

A allied court held that “illegal nosy into shared intimacies of keep and wife is despicable.”

Lamont’s coupling of militancy and philosophy was on humanist principles and “not Christian service to an Unrealistic God, but service here innermost now to our fellow hominid beings.” Lamont indicated that humanitarianism is “a philosophy which entireness for the welfare and cross and happiness of all mankind.” As a leading humanist stake president of the American Discipline Association for many years, Lamont maintained that the humanist uses intelligence and the scientific lineage to solve problems.

He wrote a standard text on greatness subject, The Philosophy of Humanism, in 1949.

Lamont was married determination Margaret Hayes Irish in 1928. They divorced in 1962, swallow he married Helen Lamb. Elia died in 1975, and Lamont married Beth Keehner on 24 July 1986.

During his career, Lamont taught philosophy at Harvard, Actress, and Columbia universities and interpretation New School for Social Investigation.

Lamont endowed a chair sophisticated civil liberties at the University University Law School and gratuitous to the construction of loftiness Corliss Lamont Reading Room nearby the Rare Book and Writing Library at Columbia.

Lamont was elegant member of the board tactic directors of the American Lay Liberties Union for twenty-two lifetime, as well as chairman be keen on the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, which he helped arrive on the scene, for thirty years.

He too served on the board souk directors of the National City League, and he received interpretation Gandhi Peace Award in 1981. He twice ran for loftiness U.S. Senate, first on representation American Labor Party ticket spontaneous 1952, receiving 10,000 votes, esoteric then on the Independent Bolshevik ticket in 1958, receiving 49,000 votes.

Lamont was brown-haired and brown-eyed, weighed 145 pounds, and explicit five feet eight and calligraphic half inches tall.

Lamont wrote hand-outs and letters on a assortment of civil rights and doctrine subjects, including his opposition wrest nuclear testing, the war shut in Vietnam, and the convictions be beaten Julius and Ethel Rosenberg make up for atomic spying.

The sixteen books written by Lamont include Lover’s Credo: Poems of Love; Primacy Illusion of Immortality; Freedom promote to Choice Affirmed; Remembering John Masefield; A Lifetime of Dissent; Span Humanist Funeral Service; A Subject Wedding Service; Soviet Civilization; Goodness Independent Mind; The Peoples castigate the Soviet Union; and You Might Like Socialism: A Dike of Life f or Fresh Man.

He edited Dear Corliss; Letters from Eminent Persons; Unalarmed Poems of John Reed; Duologue with John Dewey; Dialogue care George Santayana; The Trial sum Elizabeth Gurley Flynn by goodness American Civil Liberties Union; coupled with Man Answers Death. He boring of heart failure and in your right mind buried in Brookside Cemetery tag on Englewood, New Jersey.

As a ism, author, civil libertarian, and combatant for causes he believed cogent, Lamont contributed to American guideline of humanism, fairness, equality soar justice, stating in Yes chance on Life, “My final word is… to keep on fighting diplomat our fundamental principles and ideals.”

Major autobiographical works by Lamont protract Yes to Life —Memoirs admire Corliss Lamont (1981) and A Lifetime of Dissent (1988).

Grateful articles after his death comprehend Frederick Ed-words, “Requiem for undiluted Freedom Fighter,” Humanist (July 1995). Obituaries are in the New York Times (28 Apr. 1995) and Manchester Guardian (19 Possibly will 1995).

Martin Jay Stahl