Lazarsfeld positioned his institute as an apolitical research service organization.

Evidence

Lazarsfeld had succeeded in arranging for the de facto management of the project to be in Newark at his own research institute. This tiny institute, whose entire budget was less than a third of that of the Radio Research Project, had thus acquired a huge contract. In Lazarsfeld’s own memorandum to Cantril and Stanton he wrote, `We consider ourselves essentially a service organization which does not have set goals, but which wishes to help in selecting and achieving them. Therefore, our research program has to be such that our results are adaptable to a variety of actual policies.’ Critical undertones, even well-concealed ones, were entirely absent from the memorandum. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 997

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Frankfurt School’s critique of instrumental rationality and ‘service’ research that serves existing power structures rather than critiquing them — the direct opposite of Critical Theory’s stance. — connects to: Columbia accepted the Institute partly because it was judged an apolitical research agency — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 584; Lazarsfeld’s methodological flexibility allowed reconciliation of radical research with institutional demands — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1000

Broader Connections

• Lazarsfeld’s methodological flexibility allowed reconciliation of radical research with institutional demands #expands (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1000