THE MACCRACKEN FILES
As large numbers of European refugees fled fascism in the 1930s and early 1940s, Vassar College responded by hosting displaced scholars who had been able to come to the United States. Under the administration of President Henry Noble MacCracken (1915-1946), the Committee on Refugee Scholars invited over thirty scholars to lecture, hold informal conversations, and exhibit their works at Vassar. Some scholars, such as Richard Krautheimer and Moritz Geiger, stayed on as professors, while most were hosted for up to two weeks each.
The scholars who were invited to Vassar were often still in the process of trying to find long-term positions at a university, and subsequent letters of recommendation from members of Vassar’s faculty were helpful in securing jobs at other colleges. Over $1,000 per year to fund the program (equivalent to $17,000 in 2016 dollars) came from individual donations, departmental budgets, and the Board of Trustees. These funds were used to pay for scholars’ room and board for the duration of their stay, plus a stipend of $100 for each scholar (or $1,700 in 2016 dollars).
President MacCracken filed away hundreds of notes from various committee meetings on refugees as well as correspondence with displaced scholars from 1939 to 1942. Ten folders of these files are currently housed in Vassar’s Archives and Special Collections Library, which have been incredibly valuable as sources about Vassar’s past efforts to aid refugees of foreign conflict. Studying historical movements to embrace and support refugees is an important way to examine what we can do today in the face of the 21st century worldwide refugee crisis.
The profiles posted to this blog represent some of the 20-plus guest scholars and 2 guest professors that came to Vassar College after fleeing Europe as refugees. Because much of their work was interrupted or cut short as a result of their displacement, we want to showcase some of these scholars' achievements which have gone largely unrecognized. We also feel that it is important to show the faces and recount the experiences of refugees as individuals, each with diverse backgrounds and unique contributions to their host countries.
