American intellectual life selectively welcomed refugee thinkers matching its own spirit.

Evidence

As I have argued elsewhere, a selective pattern of acceptance can be discerned in America’s reception of the Central European refugees. Although by no means without exceptions, the warmest welcomes were reserved for those new arrivals whose thinking most closely approximated the Neue Sachlichkeit spirit that had prevailed in Weimar’s middle years. Whether in architecture with the Bauhaus, in philosophy with the Vienna Circle, or in sociology with Paul Lazarsfeld’s brand of quantitative research, the ethic of sober objectivity and technological progress struck a respondent chord in American intellectual life. The Institut, despite the design of its original building, had been critical of the Neue Sachlichkeii from the beginning. To Horkheimer and the others, it represented a stylistic correlate of the liquidation of subjectivity and the premature overcoming of contradictions in modern life. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 887

Categorization

• XREF: Explains why the Frankfurt School failed to take root in America, tying to the earlier chapters on their Weimar-era rejection of Neue Sachlichkeit and empirical sociology like Lazarsfeld’s. — connects to: Psychoanalysis was born from the migration and racism experiences of Jewish refugee scholars — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1248; French intellectuals resented German refugee scholars’ work ethic and were less welcoming than Americans — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 177
• SEED: An essay angle: how host cultures selectively assimilate émigré intellectuals who mirror their native values, and what gets lost in the process.

Broader Connections

• Psychoanalysis was born from the migration and racism experiences of Jewish refugee scholars #exemplifies (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1248