A Scholar’s Paradise, in the World
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All Images Shelby White and Leon Levy Archives Center, Institute for Advanced Study, except where noted
The Institute for Advanced Study hired the Hungarian mathematician John von Neumann on January 28, 1933. Two days later, Adolf Hitler was elected chancellor of Germany. This correspondence between von Neumann and Institute founding Director Abraham Flexner illustrates how the political context was on their minds as they discussed their academic projects.
Recruiting scholars from Europe was not always easy, as shown by the protracted negotiations for the appointment of Hermann Weyl, professor of Mathematics in Göttingen, in 1932. Weyl suffered from depression and was reluctant to emigrate to the United States. In a first cable to Flexner that arrived on January 4, 1933, he signaled his willingness to join the Institute: “Doubts vanquished Stop If you still trust me and want me, this time I accept irrevocably. Ask letter from third [of January] back unopened.” But he changed his mind the very next day, explaining that he “couldn't leave his home country,” and further adding in a third cable: “Despair over and over again about my suitability for Institute. My activity bound to mother tongue. Open the letter from the third [of January]. Set me free if still possible.” Weyl had another change of heart after Hitler’s rise to power and was eventually able to flee Germany with his Jewish wife and children to join the Institute in autumn 1933. At the same time, Albert Einstein was crossing the Atlantic en route to the Institute. Director Flexner urged him to refrain from making any political statements in the United States.
At first, Abraham Flexner was reluctant to further open the Institute to foreign scholars, except “outstanding personages such as Weyl and Einstein,” despite the founders’ concern that “no distinction should be made as respects race, religion, nationality.” Flexner said it would impede the development of science in the United States and foster resentment among American scholars. In contrast, Faculty member Oswald Veblen advocated for vigorous action in favor of refugee academics.
Born in 1882, Amalie Emmy Noether was a groundbreaking German mathematician, known in particular for her theorem relating symmetries to conservation laws. Following the Nazis' rise to power, she was fired from the University of Göttingen. Thanks to Oswald Veblen and others, she was able to come to the United States where she taught at Bryn Mawr and was a Visitor at the Institute. She died suddenly in 1935, prompting Albert Einstein and Hermann Weyl to herald her as one of the greatest mathematicians of all time.
The Institute quickly stepped up its activism in favor of displaced scholars, joining forces with other organizations such as the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars (originally called the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced German Scholars). In his final board meeting as Director in 1939, Abraham Flexner acknowledged that the choice of helping foreign academics had been a good one. This action was intensified during the war by Director Frank Aydelotte, giving an added meaning to the "usefulness" of the research conducted at the Institute.
Helping scholars who had been forced to flee Europe was often tricky. Each aid scheme had its limitations, as illustrated by the case of classical scholar Ernst Kapp, who did not fit in the scholar-in-exile program as he was already in the United States when he sought help.
Being a refugee scholar in 1940s United States was a bureaucratic nightmare. Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel had fled Vienna with his wife Adele in 1940, crossing Russia, Japan, and the Pacific to finally reach Princeton where he was offered a position at the Institute. In the following years, he was considered an "enemy alien" and had to ask for special authorization each time he wished to leave town. This did not deter U.S. authorities from calling him up for military service, prompting IAS Director Frank Aydelotte to reveal Gödel's psychiatric condition to the Service Selection Board.
Albert Einstein at his home with a group of World War II European Jewish refugee children
Einstein was very active during McCarthyism, campaigning in favor of intellectual freedom and supporting victims of anti-Communist purges. The Institute received letters denouncing his actions, sometimes in surprisingly violent terms.
Documents on this panel courtesy of Katia Salomon, Hirschman Family Collection, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
Before joining the Institute as a Faculty member in 1974, Albert O. Hirschman was already a veteran of many political struggles on both sides of the Atlantic. Here we see the fake ID with which he fled France in 1941, after having helped journalist Varian Fry organize the escape of some two thousand people from Europe.
Hirschman's influential work on the emergence of authoritarian regimes in Latin America during the 1960s and 1970s brought him into contact with Latin American scholars who themselves suffered under those regimes. After joining the Institute as a Professor in 1974, Hirschman recruited many of those scholars, including the influential sociologist Fernando Enrique Cardoso, later president of Brazil. He also helped academics and student activists opposed to Franco's regime in Spain, including sociologist Victor M. Perez-Diaz, who came to Princeton as a Member in the newly founded School of Social Science in 1975-76. The launching of the school two years earlier with Hirschman and anthropologist Clifford Geertz at its helm signaled the Institute's continued engagement with contemporary social and political issues.
In 1930, the Institute for Advanced Study was created as an academic retreat for the pursuit of daring research, unfettered by material constraints. From the beginning, political turmoil around the world interfered with this dream, and the Institute’s founders and its first faculty were faced with difficult dilemmas. Their decision to take action in solidarity and to defend fundamental freedoms inaugurated a tradition of involvement with international and domestic affairs. Contrary to initial fears, helping and welcoming academics from around the world secured the Institute’s position as a beacon for science and the humanities. It also taught its founders that scholars’ paradises aren’t eternal, but rather come and go with changing political circumstances. This exhibit traces key moments in this history, focusing on questions of displacement and academic freedom in Europe, the United States, and Latin America from the 1930s to the 1970s.
The exhibit is a companion to the Spring 2017 Institute Letter, which features three articles written by the History Working Group: The Institute’s Founding Ethos in Our Precarious Present; Einstein, Plumbers, and McCarthyism; and Emmy Noether’s Paradise.
