The Golden Era of NYC Intellect

New York City represents the highest level of intellect in the world. All around the United States, places like the Bay Area (Berkeley) may make similar claims, but NYC is different because of its geographical proximity to travel hubs that host people from all over the world. Travelers coming from Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East arrive in NYC daily, allowing a global exchange that is synergistic. People overlook the fact the free speech is not a principle shared around the world, making NYC’s level of intellectual interaction profound.  

The difference between formal education and independent self-study raises an important issue.  The level of free thought and self-improvement are important factor as well.  The politics surrounding academia can limit controversial ideas.  From a formal perspective, the book, The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left From the 1930s to the 1980s, by Alan M. Wald, is rooted in academia.  Scholars coming from Europe taught, attended, and lectured throughout New York City and formed a community that added to the city’s collective intellect.  Wald stated how, “Sometimes the New York intellectuals are called the “New York family.” In popular usage, the term usually refers to a loose circle of intellectuals whose preeminent forums have been Partisan Review, Commentary, and Dissent.”  One has to consider the effect that academic freedom had on various schools of thought.  When people think about radicalism and Marxist ideologies, they often fail to recognize the balanced discussions that those ideologies also invited.  Anyone who questioned those ideas would have to present  the same level of opposing logic  and research to the discussion.

Alan M. Wald’s book also sheds light on New York’s intellectual history and provides information about how NYC’s natural aura  is influenced by debate, discussion, and spirited conversation. Wald said, “This work approaches the history of the New York intellectuals with a view to reconstructing an important and vastly misunderstood chapter in the history of literary radicalism and the Marxist intellectual tradition in the United States.”  The point here isn’t only that radicalism can be traced back to the 1930s, but that those ideals in combination with input from others helped shape New York city’s collective intellect. A community is measured by its cultural contributions, and NYC is still contributing to the discussion.

Some of the most profound intellectuals in the world have worked at City College, as well as a number of other universities throughout New York City.  Everyone should know the significance of CCNY;  City College’s back story is often lost in discussions about budget cuts and other administrative setbacks. It is rare that a local college has such an international impact, and City College has done that.  David W. Chen wrote, Dreams Stall as CUNY, New York City’s Engine of Mobility, Sputters, which was published May 28, 2016, in The New York Times. Chen explained how, “Established in 1847 as the Free Academy of New York to educate “the children of the whole people,” as its founder Townsend Harris said, City College has been called “the poor man’s Harvard.” Tuition-free until 1976, it has produced 10 Nobel Prize winners. It was a hotbed of Jewish intellectuals in the 1930s, and today it welcomes the ambitious children of families from around the world, many of them poor and working class.”  Today, the same spirit that represented knowledge and a quest for the truth has changed. The quest for students from around the world is to get the highest paying job that they can attain. Corporate politics and corporate mindsets  have replaced the quest for pure knowledge and intellectual advancement. There was a time when, no matter what the politics were, knowledge and the truth took precedent over everything else. No one ever inferred that intellect was synonymous with pauperism. Finances was not the motivating force for New York’s scholars, in the past. Logic and honor existed, even when it wasn’t the popular opinion. Fairness was respected, and that is what ‘the golden era of NYC intellect represented.’

Yes, New York City is a geographical location, yet the true essence of that intellect has always gone  beyond that. The New York State of Mind, was the phrase used. People located in all parts of the world contribute to the worldview that represents New York City.  Noted scholar David Levering Lewis  wrote in his book, When Harlem Was in Vogue, that, “Alain Locke, the most effective publicist of the Harlem Renaissance, was a professor of philosophy in the nation’s capital, while H.L. Mencken, whose iconoclasm and American Mercury set much of the intellectual tone of this period, commuted to bohemia from Baltimore.” The world still recognizes the intellectual spirit of New York City, because all are welcome to contribute and partake in the aura of New York City’s intellect. The truth still speaks volumes, although the numbers that acknowledge facts dwindle year after year.

The city has a mindset, which represents knowledge and intellect. David Levering Lewis goes on to say how a mixture of ideas existed, even when many might think that they did not, by explaining how, “Indeed two white authors whose wonderfully evocative fiction qualified them for honorary membership in what the novelist Zora Neale Hurston pungently dubbed the “Niggerati” where South Carolinians-Julia Peterkin and Du Bose Heyward; and two African-Americans whose fiction launched the Renaissance-Claude Mckay and Jean Toomer-were Harlem outsiders who ultimately chose to live almost anywhere else but within walking distance of 135th Street and Lenox Avenue.” The point here is that there are countless, documented examples of the intellectual spirit that carried historical weight via its connection to NYC. The everyday man or woman on the street is intellectually respected, if they have the ability to intelligently prove their points of argument.  Knowledge is knowledge, and New York City always knew that.