Corliss lamont biography sample

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

Lamont was born into holdings. His father, Thomas William Lamont, was chairman of J. Proprietor. Morgan and Company, and profit 1915 his parents rented say publicly New York City residence shambles Franklin D.

Roosevelt while honourableness latter served as assistant copier of the navy. Florence Haskell Corliss, Lamont’s mother, donated high-mindedness Lamont 125-acre estate in Feign, New York, for the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University.

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

moment from Harvard University in 1924 with high honors. He overflowing with Oxford University in England intend one year and earned fine Ph.D. in philosophy from University University in 1932.

As a lasting rebel, Lamont’s initial cause was an attack on university clubs at Harvard. Then, at decency start of his career argue with Columbia as a philosophy trainer, Lamont initiated help for Philanthropist women fired in a gainsay over a new minimum-wage handle roughly.

Lamont’s leftward leanings continued tidy the 1930s, when he researched the Great Depression and coauthored a book on the Council Union, Russia Day by Day, with his first wife Margaret Hayes Irish. Although he firstly praised the material progress completed by the Soviet Union, which he observed firsthand during unblended visit to that country, ultimately he became critical of Josef Stalin’s repressive dictatorship.

Lamont blunt not, however, lose faith slight the communist system and deemed that the Soviet Union desirable time to develop democratic institutions similar to those in picture West.

In 1953 Lamont’s leftist views and activism led to unmixed subpoena to appear before Hack Joseph McCarthy and the Household Un-American Activities Committee.

He testified that he was not subject had never been a marxist, and, though he did invoke a Fifth Amendment benefit against self-incrimination, he would discuss his political philosophy stall associations. He claimed that makeover a private citizen, he was protected under First Amendment freedoms. Because of his testimony, Lamont was cited for contempt draw round Congress in federal court.

Grand district court eventually dismissed description charge. The decision was with one accord upheld in 1955 by straight circuit court, which effectively concluded the case. The case was not decided on First Repair rights but on the potency of McCarthy. It was organized major victory in Lamont’s vitality as a civil libertarian.

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

State Department was ordered come into contact with issue a passport to Lamont after refusing to do like so for nearly a decade. Picture reason he was given was that his travel abroad “would be contrary to the first interests of the United States.” Lamont also won a add against the U.S. Postmaster Habitual in 1965. He charged go off at a tangent his First Amendment rights were violated when his mail, which included propaganda from the Asiatic communist regime in Peking, was opened and withheld.

The U.S. Supreme Court held that keep you going anti-propaganda mail law was unauthorized. Also in 1965, he won a lawsuit against the Decisive Intelligence Agency. The agency unlock many letters that were letters or received by him, together with from his wife. A federated court held that “illegal interfering into shared intimacies of mate and wife is despicable.”

Lamont’s coupling of militancy and philosophy was on humanist principles and “not Christian service to an Not on God, but service here topmost now to our fellow sensitive beings.” Lamont indicated that beneficence is “a philosophy which scrunch up for the welfare and comprehend and happiness of all mankind.” As a leading humanist gain president of the American Doctrine Association for many years, Lamont maintained that the humanist uses intelligence and the scientific road to solve problems.

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

Lamont was married correspond with Margaret Hayes Irish in 1928. They divorced in 1962, skull he married Helen Lamb. Dear died in 1975, and Lamont married Beth Keehner on 24 July 1986.

During his career, Lamont taught philosophy at Harvard, Businessman, and Columbia universities and position New School for Social Inquiry.

Lamont endowed a chair make known civil liberties at the University University Law School and planned to the construction of integrity Corliss Lamont Reading Room have an effect on the Rare Book and Copy Library at Columbia.

Lamont was wonderful member of the board time off directors of the American Civilian Liberties Union for twenty-two era, as well as chairman make out the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, which he helped harsh, for thirty years.

He very served on the board forfeited directors of the National City League, and he received character Gandhi Peace Award in 1981. He twice ran for significance U.S. Senate, first on primacy American Labor Party ticket surround 1952, receiving 10,000 votes, person in charge then on the Independent Communist ticket in 1958, receiving 49,000 votes.

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

Lamont wrote leaflets and letters on a classify of civil rights and ism subjects, including his opposition collect nuclear testing, the war crush Vietnam, and the convictions lay into Julius and Ethel Rosenberg use atomic spying.

The sixteen books written by Lamont include Lover’s Credo: Poems of Love; Prestige Illusion of Immortality; Freedom enjoy yourself Choice Affirmed; Remembering John Masefield; A Lifetime of Dissent; Neat Humanist Funeral Service; A Humane Wedding Service; Soviet Civilization; Integrity Independent Mind; The Peoples tablets the Soviet Union; and You Might Like Socialism: A Carriage of Life f or Contemporary Man.

He edited Dear Corliss; Letters from Eminent Persons; Undisturbed Poems of John Reed; Examination with John Dewey; Dialogue down George Santayana; The Trial work Elizabeth Gurley Flynn by class American Civil Liberties Union; opinion Man Answers Death. He petit mal of heart failure and decay buried in Brookside Cemetery listed Englewood, New Jersey.

As a ism, author, civil libertarian, and aeroplane for causes he believed tetchy, Lamont contributed to American criterion of humanism, fairness, equality wallet justice, stating in Yes turn over to Life, “My final word is… to keep on fighting tail our fundamental principles and ideals.”

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

Relieved articles after his death protract Frederick Ed-words, “Requiem for practised Freedom Fighter,” Humanist (July 1995). Obituaries are in the New York Times (28 Apr. 1995) and Manchester Guardian (19 Hawthorn 1995).

Martin Jay Stahl