Overview
Introduction
The American Jewish Committee helped turn prejudice research into a sustained American program. During the 1940s, it paid for studies, brought scholars together and built a research department. Max Horkheimer and his colleagues joined this work as researchers with their own ideas about society. The Committee's stated purpose was to protect people from discrimination and strengthen democratic life.[1][2]
An older defense organization
The Committee began in New York in 1906. The YIVO Archives identifies its original purpose as defending Jewish civil and religious rights around the world. Its founders included Louis Marshall, Mayer Sulzberger, Jacob Schiff and Cyrus Adler. That history matters here because the Committee already had a mission before it supported the Institute's research. Its collaboration with Marxist scholars arose within a Jewish defense organization, rather than from the founding of a new Marxist institution.[3]
The Committee wanted research that could improve its work. Its own account of a May 20–21, 1944 conference says that it had supported studies directed by Horkheimer during 1943–44. Recent outbreaks of antisemitism gave the organization a practical problem: how could it know whether its defense programs reached people or changed their responses? It sought advice from social scientists instead of assuming that a well-meant appeal would work.[2]
Building a research program
John Slawson, the Committee's executive vice-president, helped establish the research department and convene scholars. Horkheimer and Samuel Flowerman later credited his leadership in their foreword to Studies in Prejudice. They described two kinds of work. Small studies would address immediate problems, including public responses to events and the use of mass media. Longer studies would examine how prejudice developed. The editors wanted the two kinds of work to inform one another.[1]
The new Department of Scientific Research gave this plan an institutional home in 1944. Horkheimer headed it before Flowerman. The department could initiate research, support outside collaborators and connect their work to the Committee's practical questions. The surviving acknowledgments establish grants and staff support; they do not provide a complete budget for the program.[1]
The 1944 conference also shows why a single intellectual label would obscure the collaboration. The Committee invited scholars from several universities and fields. Its published summary warns that it simplifies informal discussion and does not reproduce the exact position of each participant. The booklet is evidence of the Committee's research planning. It cannot establish that everyone named endorsed every conclusion.[2]
What the studies tried to explain
The initial Studies in Prejudice series used different methods to investigate a shared problem. Why did some people respond to attacks on religious and racial groups, and how did agitators turn resentment into political action? In their foreword, Horkheimer and Flowerman presented the five volumes as parts of this inquiry.[1]
The Authoritarian Personality [1] studied links between prejudice and patterns of personality. Its researchers combined questionnaires, interviews and other psychological techniques. Prophets of Deceit, by Leo Lowenthal and Norbert Guterman, examined agitators' appeals. Other volumes considered war veterans, clinical case histories and the history of German antisemitism. The choice of methods reflected different questions; the Committee did not ask every researcher to write the same kind of book.[1]
The Berkeley Public Opinion Study and the Institute of Social Research jointly produced The Authoritarian Personality. Horkheimer's preface identifies R. Nevitt Sanford and Theodor Adorno as directors and Else Frenkel-Brunswik and Daniel Levinson as senior collaborators. It stresses shared responsibility for the research. The American Jewish Committee supplied grants, and its research department helped the study reach publication. This division of labor matters: sponsor, research team and university setting were related institutions with different roles.[1]
Education as an intended use
Horkheimer and Flowerman wanted the research to help reduce prejudice through education. They argued that educators needed to understand how prejudice worked before choosing remedies. Their interest extended beyond correcting a false statement. For example, exposing an agitator's tricks might help an audience recognize an appeal that played on its fears.[1]
Their foreword also acknowledged a limit in the first studies. Much of the work examined individuals. The department was moving toward studies of groups and institutions, because a person's conduct could change with the pressures of a particular setting. Someone might behave tolerantly in one situation and express bigotry in another. That question required more than a fixed portrait of a prejudiced personality.[1]
The publications establish a collaboration that produced research and proposed educational uses. They leave a further question: which findings did particular schools, agencies or community programs use, and what happened when they did? Answering that question requires records from those programs, alongside the researchers' hopes for their work.