ABSTRACT
Robert Straughton and Helen Merrell Lynd's classic study of smalltown white America, Middletown, was one of the first sociological works to be widely promoted and distributed among the general public. After the Middletown studies, Robert Lynd only produced one other major work, Knowledge for What? The Place of Social Science in American Culture, a critical appraisal of the contemporary state of the social sciences in which Lynd called for social scientists to become critics of the status quo, not its high priests. After Middletown, Lynd was offered a position at the newly established Sarah Lawrence College and had a formative influence on its innovative development and open curriculum. Newark was charged with investigating Lynd's activities during his undergraduate years at Princeton. On June 26,1942, New York submitted its report, a virtual biography in itself, providing a detailed account of Lynd's education, employment and salary history, character, and suspect or derogatory activities.
