MacIver routed the Institute’s rescue through Columbia’s long-serving conservative president.

Evidence

Columbia was an Ivy League university, one of the most highly respected universities in the United States. The second major department of sociology in the USA (after Chicago’s) had been established at Columbia by Franklin Henry Giddings (1855-1931), one of the founders of sociology in the USA, who had become the first full professor of sociology at an American university in 1894 at Columbia. The most important representatives of sociology in the USA in the mid-1930s were Robert S. Lynd and Robert MacIver. … Lynd apparently did not see the scholars from Frankfurt as potential competition of any sort, but rather as reinforcements for the kind of social research which he himself stood for. He made representations on behalf of the Frankfurt group to his colleague Robert MacIver, chairman of the Department of Sociology. Robert MacIver, Professor of Political Science at Columbia since 1927, took up the suggestion, and recommended to his friend Nicholas Murray Butler that help should be offered to the Frankfurt academics. Butler was a liberal conservative who had been president of Columbia University since 1902, and in 1912 had been Republican candidate for the vice-presidency of the United States. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 580 (#expands, via linked claim)

Although the Institute of Social Research had never made any efforts to achieve serious co-operation with the professors at Columbia, and had remained a closed book to even the most well disposed of them, as a member of the Institute Marcuse was not approaching them merely as an individual. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1230 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The Institute remained socially isolated from Columbia’s professoriate despite its relocation there — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1230; Lynd’s goodwill and MacIver’s influence secured Columbia’s offer to the exiled Institute. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 580

Broader Connections

• Lynd’s goodwill and MacIver’s influence secured Columbia’s offer to the exiled Institute. #expands (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 580
• The Institute remained socially isolated from Columbia’s professoriate despite its relocation there #complicates (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1230