Horkheimer judged America safer for academic work despite a worsening economy

Evidence

On the whole, my impression is that this part of the world will be more suited to quiet academic work in the coming years than Europe. The news in the papers from over there frightens me every day. Admittedly, the economic and political situation in the United States is not rosy either. In fact things are much worse here than I had thought. We must expect rapid developments in the aggravation of the economic situation. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 577

Categorization

• QUESTION: Horkheimer predicted the US economic situation would rapidly worsen — did the Institute’s Americanization plans respond to an anticipated US depression that largely did not arrive on his timeline?
• XREF: This assessment of America as a refuge for quiet scholarship despite economic gloom echoes the emigration calculus rendered in The Reluctant Fundamentalist and the broader intellectual-exile literature the reader keeps.