American Institute for Marxist Studies

Template:TOCnestleft The American Institute for Marxist Studies was founded in 1964 by Herbert Aptheker in New York.

1976 Symposium on Marxism

In New York City, on April 23-24, 1976, the American Institute for Marxist Studies sponsored a Symposium at Columbia University on "Marxism and the Bicentennial.

Participants

The following participated in panels, or delivered papers:

• Prof. Robert S. Cohen - Boston University, First Session, presiding. Interestingly, Prof. Robert S. Cohen of Wesleyan University, shows up on page 57, in the section on the Jefferson School Case (ie. Subversive Activities Control Board SACB hearings to have the school designated as a CPUSA front, 1953. He "testified for the school at the Board's hearings.".
• Prof. Johnnetta - a paper on "Militant Black Women in Early U.S. History"; Un. of Massachusetts
• Dr. Herbert Aptheker - director of AIMS and professor at Hostos Community College CUNY - "The American Revolution: A Marxian Analysis".

Panels

Slavery and the Bicentennial

• Dorothy Burnham - Empire State College - presiding
• Earl Smith - University of Connecticut, "Recent Literature on Slavery: A Critique"
• Herbert Aptheker - Hostos Community College, "The Abolitionist Movement"

The Left in Public Office

• Gwendolyn Patton - Brooklyn College, presiding
• Jarvais Gilden - Yale University, on "Benjamin J. Davis"
• Si Simon W. Gerson - on "Peter Cacchione"
• Gerald Meyer - Hostos Community College, on "Vito Marcantonio"

Labor Struggles During the Cold War

• David Laibman - Brooklyn College, chairman
• Akosua Barthwell - Columbia University, on "Tobacco Workers and the Reynolds Strike, 1947"
• Paul J. Nyden - University of Pittsburgh, on "United Mine Workers Leadership and the Cold War"
• Roger Keeran - Cornell University, on "United Auto Workers and the Beginning of the Cold War". [KW: Keeran would write a book in the 1990's about "The Communist Party and the United Auto Workers". It is a reasonable, well footnoted work for someone who is definitely sympathetic to the marxist left. One weakness is that it had literally no mention of John Conyers Sr, the father of the marxist Rep. John Conyers Jr, who was also a UAW worker.

Witch-Hunting: McCarthy Style

• Leo Auerbach - Jersey City State College, presiding
• Marvin Gettleman - Polytechnic Institute, New York, on the activities "of the notorious Rapp-Coudert Committee which hounded some of the best teachers out of the school system"
• Norman Markowitz - Rutgers University, "Social-Democrats and Witch-Hunting"

The Working Class and the Bicentennial: (DW, 4/13/76 article)

• Louise T. Patterson - AIMS, presiding
• Gus Hall - General Secretary of the Communist Party USA
• Ernest DeMaio - UN representative of the World Federation of Trade Unions
• Dennis Serette - president of the Black Trade Unionists Caucus, New York State
• Philip S. Foner - professor of history, Lincoln University

A short article in the Daily World, April 13, 1976, "Marxism & Bicentennial" N.Y. symposium April 23-24, listed some of the same participants with some fuller names such as Simon W. Gerson and misspelled John J. Nyden instead of Paul J. Nyden.

References

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