Max Lerner Author

• Gender: Male
• Citizenship: United States
• Born: Dec 20, 1902
• Died: Jun 5, 1992

Maxwell "Max" Alan Lerner was an American journalist and educator known for his controversial syndicated column.

After immigrating from Russia with his parents in 1907, Lerner earned a B.A. from Yale University in 1923. He studied law there but transferred to Washington University in St. Louis for an M.A. in 1925.

He earned a doctorate from the Brookings Institution in 1927 and began work as an editor:

Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences

The Nation

PM

Lerner's most influential book was America as a Civilization: Life and Thought in the United States Today. Lerner was a staunch opponent of discrimination against African Americans, but supported the wartime internment of Japanese Americans and backed an American Civil Liberties Union resolution on the issue to "subordinate civil liberties to wartime considerations and political loyalties". Lerner was a strong advocate of the New Deal during the 1930s, and, wrote Murray Rothbard, "a Stalinist apologist before, during, and after World War II".

His column for the New York Post debuted in 1949. It earned him a place on the master list of Nixon political opponents. During most of his career he was considered a liberal.