Rival émigrés actively spread Communist-front rumors to undermine the Institute’s funding.

Evidence

But the directors of the Institute had to be prepared for the fact that suspicions that the Institute had Communist members of staff, was Marxist and was only a front organization were being spread not only by people at the New School but also by all sorts of other émigrés who wanted to discredit the Institute in the eyes of American grant organizations, or simply give vent to their irritation with it. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1060

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels how McCarthy-era and earlier anti-Communist suspicion cost intellectuals institutional support — connects to later chapters on the Institute’s American marginalization.