K

KALLEN, HORACE MEYER Horace Meyer Kallen was an American philosopher and leading public intellectual. Born in Berenstadt, Germany, into an Orthodox Jewish family, Kallen moved to Boston in 1887. He earned his BA in 1903 and his PhD in 1908, both at Harvard. He studied with George Santayana, Josiah Royce, and William James, and edited the manuscript of James’s Some Problems of Philosophy (1910). In 1918 he resigned his teaching position at the University of Wisconsin to protest the trampling of academic freedom during the patriotic fervor of the First World War. In 1919 he joined the original core faculty of the New School for Social Research, where he remained for his entire career, teaching his last course in 1973. Freedom loomed large in his career, and he wrote eight major books and numerous articles with the word ‘‘free,’’ ‘‘freedom,’’ or ‘‘liberty’’ in the title. He called his philosophical approach ‘‘aesthetic pragmatism.’’ The arts, literature, and religion were central to his philosophical outlook. He was a committed Zionist who embraced a secular Judaism. From early in his career, he argued that cultural diversity and the ‘‘American Idea’’ were compatible with each other. He coined the term ‘‘cultural pluralism’’ while a teaching assistant to Santayana. His 1915 essay ‘‘Democracy Versus the Melting-Pot’’ thrust him into the public debate about immigration and assimilation. Critical of those who contended that assimilation was essential for the preservation of American democracy, he argued that respect for ethnic and racial difference strengthened America.