In American exile, funding critical theory required marketing it to foundations and private patrons

Evidence

From the winter of 1938-9 onward, the Institute tried (very half-heartedly) to get official foundations and private citizens interested in its activities as a whole and in specific research projects (as briefly sketched out in the Institute’s impressive-looking prospectus of 1938), in the hope of receiving grant money. (Horkheimer wrote to Benjamin, `As you can imagine, this activity, in view of the special nature of our work, which is seen here even more than elsewhere as a luxury, at the very least, and in the medium of this language, is not easy for me.‘273) Many of the staff were left confused and insecure by more or less secretive hints dropped about the Institute’s impending financial collapse, and by obscure reductions in their salaries. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 272

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the reader’s notes on research institutions reorienting toward sponsors and ‘impressive-looking’ procedural signals. — connects to: Institutional dependence on sponsorship tempted Critical Theorists into self-censorship. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 457; A private fund strategized placement of market advocates inside US academia — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 258; The exiled Institute cultivated American scholarly ties to legitimize itself — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 3317
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Institutional dependence on sponsorship tempted Critical Theorists into self-censorship. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 457; A private fund strategized placement of market advocates inside US academia — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 258; The exiled Institute cultivated American scholarly ties to legitimize itself — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 3317