American Committee for Cultural Freedom

The American Committee for Cultural Freedom (ACCF) was the U.S. affiliate of the anti-Communist Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF).

Overview

The ACCF and CCF were organizations that, during the Cold War, sought to encourage intellectuals to be critical of the Soviet Union and Communism, and to combat, according to a writer for The New York Times, "the continuing strength of the Soviet myth among the Western cultural elite. Despite all that had happened - the Moscow show trials, the Nazi-Soviet pact, the assassination of Leon Trotsky, the Russian attack on Finland, the takeovers in Eastern Europe, the mounting evidence of the gulag - Joseph Stalin still retained the loyalty of many writers, artists and scientists who viewed the Soviet Union as a progressive alternative to the 'reactionary,' 'war-mongering' United States."[1] The CCF was funded by the CIA, as well as the ACCF (via the CIA officer James Burnham and front organizations like the National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE).[2]

Members

The dominant figure in the organization was Sidney Hook. Its 600-strong membership encompassed leading figures on both the Right and the Left, some of whom included:

  1. Roger Baldwin
  2. Daniel Bell
  3. James Burnham
  4. Alexander Calder
  5. John Chamberlain
  6. Whittaker Chambers
  7. Elliot Cohen
  8. Robert Gorham Davis (chairman 1953–1954)[3]
  9. Moshe Decter
  10. John Dewey
  11. John Dos Passos
  12. Max Eastman
  13. James T. Farrell
  14. John Kenneth Galbraith
  15. Henry Hazlitt
  16. Sidney Hook
  17. Karl Jaspers
  18. Elia Kazan
  19. Irving Kristol
  20. Melvin J. Lasky
  21. Sol Levitas
  22. Dwight Macdonald
  23. Reinhold Niebuhr
  24. Mary McCarthy
  25. J. Robert Oppenheimer
  26. William Phillips
  27. Merlyn Pitzele
  28. Jackson Pollock
  29. David Riesman
  30. Elmer Rice
  31. James Rorty
  32. Richard Rovere
  33. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
  34. George Schuyler
  35. Sol Stein
  36. Norman Thomas
  37. Diana Trilling
  38. James Wechsler

The committee's central or executive committee varied over time. James Turnham, who worked for the CIA, was a member until he left the group circa 1954.[4] Whittaker Chambers joined in late 1954 and was also a member of the executive committee.[5][6][7][8][9] Diana Trilling became chair person at some point.[10]

See also

References
  1. Cranky Integrity on the Left" in The New York Times (August 27, 1989)
  2. Wilford, Hugh. The Mighty Wurlitzer.
  3. "Robert G. Davis, 90, Author, Professor and Literary Critic". The New York Times. 17 July 1998. Retrieved 29 July 2017.
  4. Smant, Kevin J. (1992). How Great the Triumph: James Burnham, Anti-Communism, and the Conservative Movement. University Press of America. p. 45.
  5. Chambers, Whittaker (1987). Odyssey of a Friend (reprint ed.). Washington: Regnery. p. 229.
  6. Navasky, Victor (2013). Naming Names. Open Road Media. ISBN 9781480436213.
  7. Gollin, James (2001). Pied Piper: The Many Lives of Noah Greenberg. Pendragon Press. p. 143. ISBN 9781576470411.
  8. Pells, Richard H. (1989). The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age. Wesleyan University Press. p. 340. ISBN 9780819562258.
  9. Ceplair, Larry (2011). Anti-communism in Twentieth-Century America. ABC-CLIO. p. 134. ISBN 9781440800481.
  10. Haslett, Tobi (29 May 2017). "The Feuds of Diana Trilling". New Yorker. Retrieved 22 October 2017.

Sources
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