ABSTRACT
The philosophy department at the City College of New York was Morris Raphael Cohen's department. Although Harry Overstreet was chair through most of the Cohen years-1912 until his retirement in 1938-he was clearly the dominant intellectual figure for most of these years. The department honored the memory of Cohen precisely by the steady stimulus provided by a contentious group. Cohen was born in Mink, Russia in 1880. Mink, a center of both the Jewish enlightenment and classical Hebrew learning, had an enormous and lifelong impact on Cohen. "The Future of American Liberalism", is the only statement Cohen wrote specifically for The Faith of a Liberal. Cohen was part of that special generation that created the classical liberal tradition; or at least transplanted it to American soil. The first half of the twentieth century revealed a liberalism positioned between fascism and communism, or if one prefers, between the political right and left.
