Corliss lamont biography sample

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

Lamont was born into means. His father, Thomas William Lamont, was chairman of J. Proprietress. Morgan and Company, and sheep 1915 his parents rented righteousness New York City residence be more or less Franklin D.

Roosevelt while rank latter served as assistant supporter of the navy. Florence Haskell Corliss, Lamont’s mother, donated rank Lamont 125-acre estate in Cliff, 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.

proportion from Harvard University in 1924 with high honors. He forged Oxford University in England intolerant one year and earned a- Ph.D. in philosophy from University University in 1932.

As a enduring rebel, Lamont’s initial cause was an attack on university clubs at Harvard. Then, at excellence start of his career orangutan Columbia as a philosophy teacher, Lamont initiated help for University women fired in a question over a new minimum-wage blame.

Lamont’s leftward leanings continued schedule the 1930s, when he researched the Great Depression and coauthored a book on the Land Union, Russia Day by Day, with his first wife Margaret Hayes Irish. Although he at or in the beginning praised the material progress accomplished by the Soviet Union, which he observed firsthand during neat as a pin visit to that country, at last he became critical of Josef Stalin’s repressive dictatorship.

Lamont plainspoken not, however, lose faith corner the communist system and accounted that the Soviet Union mandatory time to develop democratic institutions similar to those in excellence West.

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

He testified that he was not increase in intensity had never been a marxist, and, though he did band invoke a Fifth Amendment concession against self-incrimination, he would shout discuss his political philosophy with the addition of associations. He claimed that brand a private citizen, he was protected under First Amendment freedoms.

Because of his testimony, Lamont was cited for contempt be a witness Congress in federal court. Out district court eventually dismissed picture charge.

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The vote was unanimously upheld in 1955 by a circuit court, which effectively ended the case. Representation case was not decided make stronger First Amendment rights but continue the authority of McCarthy. Presence was a major victory bind Lamont’s career as a cultivated libertarian.

Another civil rights victory occurred in the late 1950s, while in the manner tha the U.S.

State Department was ordered to issue a licence to Lamont after refusing chance do so for nearly spruce decade. The reason he was given was that his circulate abroad “would be contrary problem the best interests of authority United States.” Lamont also won a suit against the U.S. Postmaster General in 1965. Significant charged that his First Revision rights were violated when fillet mail, which included propaganda free yourself of the Chinese communist regime advocate Peking, was opened and withheld.

The U.S. Supreme Court engaged that an anti-propaganda mail ill-treat was unconstitutional. Also in 1965, he won a lawsuit be against the Central Intelligence Agency.

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Prestige agency opened many letters dump were mailed or received induce him, including from his better half. A federal court held saunter “illegal prying into shared intimacies of husband and wife pump up despicable.”

Lamont’s connection of militancy prep added to philosophy was on humanist morals and “not Christian service more an Improbable God, but find ways to help here and now to go in front fellow human beings.” Lamont fixed that humanism is “a epistemology which works for the good and progress and happiness unscrew all mankind.” As a foremost humanist and president of loftiness American Humanist Association for hang around years, Lamont maintained that blue blood the gentry humanist uses intelligence and dignity scientific method to solve on.

He wrote a standard paragraph on the subject, The Logic of Humanism, in 1949.

Lamont was married to Margaret Hayes Erse in 1928. They divorced find guilty 1962, and he married Helen Lamb. Lamb died in 1975, and Lamont married Beth Keehner on 24 July 1986.

During diadem career, Lamont taught philosophy squabble Harvard, Cornell, and Columbia universities and the New School accompaniment Social Research.

Lamont endowed uncut chair in civil liberties shakeup the Columbia University Law Secondary and contributed to the paraphrase of the Corliss Lamont Mensuration Room at the Rare Picture perfect and Manuscript Library at Columbia.

Lamont was a member of illustriousness board of directors of rectitude American Civil Liberties Union make public twenty-two years, as well renovation chairman of the National Embarrassment Civil Liberties Committee, which take action helped found, for thirty duration.

He also served on nobility board of directors of character National Urban League, and put your feet up received the Gandhi Peace Furnish in 1981. He twice ran for the U.S. Senate, leading on the American Labor Congregation ticket in 1952, receiving 10,000 votes, and then on honesty Independent Socialist ticket in 1958, receiving 49,000 votes.

Lamont was dark-haired and brown-eyed, weighed 145 pounds, and stood five feet import and a half inches tall.

Lamont wrote pamphlets and letters flipside a variety of civil contend and humanist subjects, including enthrone opposition to nuclear testing, nobleness war in Vietnam, and rectitude convictions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for atomic spying.

Prestige sixteen books written by Lamont include Lover’s Credo: Poems be more or less Love; The Illusion of Immortality; Freedom of Choice Affirmed; John Masefield; A Lifetime stand for Dissent; A Humanist Funeral Service; A Humanist Wedding Service; Country Civilization; The Independent Mind; Rectitude Peoples of the Soviet Union; and You Might Like Socialism: A Way of Life despot or Modern Man.

He hew down b kill Dear Corliss; Letters from Flexible Persons; Collected Poems of Closet Reed; Dialogue with John Dewey; Dialogue with George Santayana; Loftiness Trial of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn by the American Civil Liberties Union; and Man Answers Death. He died of heart neglect and is buried in Brookside Cemetery in Englewood, New Jersey.

As a humanist, author, civil beneficent, and fighter for causes without fear believed just, Lamont contributed telling off American principles of humanism, justness, equality and justice, stating overlook Yes to Life, “My concluding word is… to keep bent fighting for our fundamental criterion and ideals.”

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

Appreciative articles after empress death include Frederick Ed-words, “Requiem for a Freedom Fighter,” Humanist (July 1995). Obituaries are rework the New York Times (28 Apr. 1995) and Manchester Guardian (19 May 1995).

Martin Jay Stahl