Alvin Saunders Johnson (December 18, 1874 – June 7, 1971) was an American

economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this field there are ...

and a co-founder and first director of

The New School The New School is a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for progressive thinkers. ...

Biography

Alvin Johnson was born near

Homer, Nebraska Homer is a village in Dakota County, Nebraska, Dakota County, Nebraska, United States. It is part of the Sioux City, Iowa, Sioux City, Iowa, IA–NE–South Dakota, SD Sioux City metropolitan area, Metropolitan Statistical Area. The populat ...

. He was educated at the

University of Nebraska A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, ...

and Columbia (Ph.D., 1902). Afterwards, he was employed in various positions at Columbia, the

, the

University of Texas The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

, the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

, Stanford, and at

Cornell Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach a ...

after 1913. He was assistant editor of the ''Political Science Quarterly'' in 1902–06, and editor from 1917 of the ''New Republic'' in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. He was a co-founder of

in New York in 1918, becoming its director in 1922. Johnson helped to save numerous central European scholars from persecution by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s, then brought them to a specially-created division of the New School which became known as the "University in Exile". There, among others, he worked with the antifascist intellectual

Max Ascoli Max Ascoli (1898–1978) was a Jewish Italian-American professor of political philosophy and law at the New School for Social Research, United States of America. Career Ascoli's career started in Italy and continued in the United States. Ba ...

. He was also an editor of the massive ''

Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences The ''Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences'' is a specialized fifteen-volume Encyclopedia first published in 1930 and last published in 1967. It was envisaged in the 1920s by scholars working in disciplines which increasingly were coming to be know ...

''. He officially retired in December 1945, and died in 1971 in

Upper Nyack, New York Upper Nyack is a village incorporated in 1872 in the town of Clarkstown, Rockland County, New York, United States. It is located north of the village of Nyack, east of Valley Cottage, south of Rockland Lake State Park, and west of the Hudson ...

Major publications

*Rent in Modern Economic Theory: An Essay in Distribution, 1903. *Introduction to Economics, 1909. *"Review of Hobson's Industrial System", 1911, AER. *"Review of Hobson's Science of Wealth", 1912, AER. *"Review of Böhm-Bawerk's Positive Theory of Capital", 1914, AER. *"Review of Adler's Kapitalzins und Preisbewegung", 1914, AER. *War and the Interests of Labor, 1914. *Commerce and War, 1914. *The Professor and the Petticoat, 1914 (novel). *"Review of Carver's Essays in Social Justice and Hollander's Abolition of Poverty", 1916, AER *John Stuyvesant, Ancestor, 1919. *Editor, Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, 1930. *"The Rising Tide of Anti-Semitism", 1939, Survey Graphic *The Clock of History, 1946. *Socialism in Western Europe, 1948. *Pioneer's Progress: An autobiography, 1952. *Essays in Social Economics, 1954. *New World for Old: A Family Migration, 1965 *Introduction to Economics, 1971.
New School Web Site

Literature

* Peter Rutkoff, Peter M. Rutkoff, William B. Scott: ''New School: a History of the New School for Social Research''. New York: Free Press 1986. * Claus-Dieter Krohn: ''Wissenschaft im Exil. Deutsche Sozial- und Wirtschaftswissenschaftler in den USA und die New School for Social Research'', Frankfurt a.M. Campus 1987. * Autobiography
Pioneer's Progress
published in 1952

References

External links

*

* Alvin Saunders Johnson papers (MS 615). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library

* 1874 births 1971 deaths People from Dakota County, Nebraska Economists from New York (state) American essayists American male journalists University of Nebraska–Lincoln alumni Columbia University alumni People from Upper Nyack, New York American male essayists Presidents of the American Economic Association Commanders Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany Economists from Nebraska Journal of Political Economy editors {{US-economist-stub