2025-06-15 22:18 <br/> Tags: #AmericanJewry #EarlyZionism #people #Harvard ![[image-10.png|278x366]] # Horace M. Kallen (1882-1974) - A German born Jew, Kallen Immigrated to the United states as a child and graduated from Harvard. - He held positions at several universities: Princeton, Harvard, Oxford, UW Madison, etc. (future president Woodrow Wilson hired Kallen at his Princeton position) - Kallen was critical in the foundation of the [[Balfour Declaration]]. - Kallen created the phrase "cultural pluralism," believing racial and ethnic diversity was best for the United States. - In much the same way as [[Israel Zangwill]] and his idea of a "melting pot." - Both Zangwill and Kallen were of Jewish immigrant families. Zangwill to the UK and Kallen to the US. - The melting pot idea imagines all group distinctions erased through the forced mixture - melting - of the nation - pot. - Cultural pluralism imagines all these groups retaining their distinctions, with no one group (white people) dominating the rest. - Kallen's idea of cultural pluralism saw American society as a patchwork of innumerable ethnicities, speaking their foreign languages, worshiping foreign and *false* gods, retaining their foreign culture, and the conservation of their group loyalties. - The shared variable within American cultural pluralism would be a "common civic and political culture." *In the century following Kallen's writings, the United States has undergone a mass erosion of racial cohesion. The US has been forcibly permeated by the non-white races of the world, thus Kallen's vision has likely been nearly reached. Are we better for it?* #### Parushim - Kallen was the founder of [[Parushim]], an elite society of Jews within Harvard, using their influence together in quiet to push the Zionist cause. - The group was fraternal in nature and members were cultivated with caution. The very brightest who were dedicated to the cause were admitted. - Once leaving academia, the members would gain influence and power in the private and public life, all the while under allegiance to the Zionist cause. #### References - Wikipedia, _“Horace Kallen,”_ [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Kallen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Kallen). - Horace Kallen, _“The Right to Be Different,”_ Pluralism Project (Harvard University), originally published in _The Nation_, ca. 1915, [https://pluralism.org/the-right-to-be-different](https://pluralism.org/the-right-to-be-different). - Weir, Alison. 2014. _Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel_. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.