Dates

• Existence: 1902 - 1995

Biography

Corliss Lamont (March 28, 1902-April 26, 1995) was a Socialist author, teacher, and humanist philosopher. He graduated from Phillips Exeter in 1920 and from Harvard in 1924 with a bachelor's degree and high honors. After a year at Oxford University, he became a philosophy lecturer at Columbia and in 1932 earned a doctor of philosophy degree there. Lamont wrote 16 books and hundreds of pamphlets on subjects ranging from humanism to McCarthyism. His books include The Philosophy of Humanism (1949), The Illusion of Immortality (1935), and The Peoples of the Soviet Union (1946). He served as director of the American Civil Liberties Union for 22 years, was the chairman of the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee for 30 years.

Lamont campaigned for Soviet-American friendship, which garnered him false accusations of Communist affiliations. He won court battles against censure by Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and mail censorship by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Lamont was a New Jersey neighbor of Edgar Snow.

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