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BROOKLYN COLLEGE ARCHIVES AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS
The Papers of Harry Slochower
Accession Number 88-007
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Harry Slochower was born in 1900 in Bukovina, then part of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire, and came to the United States with his family in 1913.
He grew up in the Bronx and graduated from the College of the City of New
York in 1923 with a B.S.S. in Philosophy and German. Mr Slochower
continued his studies at Columbia University where he received his M.A.
in 1924 and Ph.D. in 1928, both in German. He married in 1942 and
the couple had a daughter they named Joyce.
In 1925-26 Harry Slochower went to Europe and studied at the Universities
of Munich, Berlin, and Heidelberg. He expounded on the philosophy
of John Dewey (in English) at the University of Berlin and gave a series
of lectures on Contemporary American Literature at the Humboldt-Akademie
also in Berlin. In 1929 Harry Slochower was awarded a Guggenheim
Fellowship to study what the effects of Schopenhauer's works had on literature
and philosophy.
Harry Slochower began his career teaching English to immigrants in the New York
City Public School system. He taught German at Columbia University's
Extension Division between 1924 and 1927, and, in 1930, joined the faculty
at Brooklyn College as Assistant Professor in the German Department.
He taught Comparative Literature and, in time, gave an introductory course
in the Department of Philosophy. Professor Slochower was later affiliated
with the New School for Social Research, the William Alanson White Institute
for Psychiatry, the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health, the Brooklyn
Academy of Arts and Sciences, and, in 1967, lectured at the University
of Rochester. He was Visiting Professor at Drew University, Adjunct
Professor at Syracuse University in 1969, and Visiting Professor at Sir
George Williams University (Montreal) in the summer of 1973.
The controversy over Dr. Harry Slochower began in the 1940's when an English
professor at Brooklyn College, Bernard Grebanier, accused Harry Slochower
of being a member of the Communist party. Harry Slochower never
denied that he was drawn to Marxist writings and was sympathetic to the
Communist party. However, under oath, Dr. Slochower denied the accusations
and, since the charges could not be substantiated, he continued to teach
and to write. In 1952 Harry Slochower was called before a Senate
Internal Security subcommittee regarding "subversive activities".
He refused to state whether or not he had been a Communist in the 1940's,
and invoked the Fifth Amendment. Professor Slochower was then dismissed
from Brooklyn College. Subsequently, Dr. Slochower was reinstated
with more than $40,000.00 in back pay, but was again suspended on charges
that he had made false statements under oath at the Senate hearing.
Dr. Slochower resigned and spent the rest of his life practicing psychoanalysis.
Harry Slochower wrote five books of literary criticism, including Three Ways
of Modern Man (1937), Thomas Mann's Joseph Story: An Interpretation
(1938), and No Voice is Wholly Lost (1945), and contributed frequently
in philosophical, literary, and psychoanalytic journals. Dr Slochower
was President of the Association for Applied Psychoanalysis for several
years, and editor in chief of American Imago, a psychoanalytic quarterly,
from 1964 until his death.
Dr. Harry Slochower died on May 11, 1991 at his home in Brooklyn.
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