The USA’s entry into war created the academic employment openings that dispersed the Institute

Evidence

Neumann, who had no prospects of a university post in the short term from which he could have made a living, applied successfully some three months later for a post with the Board of Economic Warfare. In the late summer of 1941, William J. Donovan (`Wild Bill’), who was building up the Office of the Coordinator of Information which later developed into the Office of Strategic Services, had approached the Institute with regard to employing Neumann and Horkheimer in their capacities as the greatest experts on Nazi journals and magazines. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the United States declared war on Japan, and Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. The USA thus became a nation at war, and a contribution to the war effort was expected from academics and intellectuals; many vacancies for academically qualified personnel opened up in Washington. With his appointment as chief consultant at the Board of Economic Warfare, Neumann was the first associate of the Institute to relieve it of a financial burden and to take up an activity which could be seen as a contribution by the Institute to the war effort. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1223

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader war-effort mobilisation of émigré academics and eventual absorption of Frankfurt School members into US government service, echoed in ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ the American elite absorbs the talented outsider. — connects to: Six Institute associates joined US war agencies by 1943; Former Institut members scattered into American universities and government rather than returning together — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 855; Former Institute associates were systematically held at distance and dispersed into American academia — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1637

Broader Connections

• Former Institut members scattered into American universities and government rather than returning together #corroborates (0.75) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 855
• Former Institute associates were systematically held at distance and dispersed into American academia #corroborates (0.72) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1637