Horkheimer and Adorno opposed ex-Nazi sociologists through private academic maneuvering, not public critique.

Evidence

But Adorno and Horkheimer should not have been surprised that a young intellectual like Habermas was not more critical of scholars such as Gehlen and Schelsky, despite what he could learn from them or from Freyer. Those who were aware of many of their colleagues’ fascist past or the close relation between their thinking and fascism, or who understood the connection in terms of the critique of ideology, remained silent. Horkheimer and Adorno, too, remained silent in public, only attempting to block the influence of such people in the academic fieldfor example, by giving their advice in 1958 at the request of a professor at Heidelberg who wanted to prevent Gehlen from being appointed to a professorship at that prestigious university or by involving themselves in the elections for the executive committee of the German Sociological Association, in which Schelsky was playing an increasingly important part. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2316

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: The private-academic-maneuvering vs. public silence dynamic echoes the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ essay’s theme of coded institutional signaling, though the connection is thematic rather than direct.
• XREF: connects to: Frankfurt theorists fought Nazi-linked sociologists through academic politics, not public critique — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2316; Jewish émigrés faced pressure not to testify against Nazi-era academics — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1713

Broader Connections

• Jewish émigrés faced pressure not to testify against Nazi-era academics #responds-to (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1713