Johnson, Alvin Saunders (1874–1971)

Abstract

Alvin Johnson was born on 18 December 1874 near Homer, Nebraska, and died 7 June 1971 in Upper Nyack, New York. He received a BA (1897) and MA (1898) from the University of Nebraska and a Ph.D. from Columbia University (1902). His varied teaching career included Bryn Mawr, Columbia, Nebraska, Texas, Chicago, Stanford (twice), Cornell and the New School for Social Research of which, in 1919, he was a founder and, beginning in 1923, director. He was president of the American Economic Association in 1936 and of the American Association of Adult Education in 1939. He was active in the struggle for academic freedom and other civil rights and in providing a haven, at the New School, for refugee scholars. His students included Walton Hale Hamilton, Frank H. Knight and James Harvey Rogers.