Horace Kallen

Horace Meyer Kallen (August 11, 1882 – February 16, 1974) was a German-born American philosopher who supported pluralism and Zionism. Biography Horace Meyer Kallen was born on August 11, 1882, in the town of Bernstadt, Prussian Silesia (now Bierutów, Lower Silesian Voivodeship, Poland). His parents were Jacob David Kallen, an Orthodox rabbi, and Esther Rebecca Glazier. In 1887, the family emigrated to the United States. Kallen studied philosophy at Harvard University under George Santayana; in 1903, he received a BA magna cum laude. That same year, Kallen was personally hired by future American President Woodrow Wilson, then Princeton University's president, to become the first Jew to ever teach at the university. But after teaching English at Princeton for two years, his contract was not renewed, and he returned to Harvard for graduate study and worked as Santayana's assistant. In 1908, Kallen received his doctorate and was awarded a Sheldon Travelling Fellowship to study at Oxford University. He was also a lifetime friend of Alain Locke, whom he met at Harvard and who was the first African-American Rhodes Scholar; and would remain the only one until the 1960s. He lectured in philosophy at Harvard from his graduation until 1911, occasionally working as a logic instructor at Clark College in Worcester, Massachusetts. In 1911, he moved to teach philosophy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison until 1918, when he was named a professor at The New School in New York City as a founding member, where he remained for the rest of his career. By 1933, Kallen and his colleague Sidney Hook were serving on the ACLU's academic freedom committee.