The Jewish Origins of Cultural Pluralism (Indiana UP, 2011) traces the emergence of the idea of cultural pluralism to a group of Jewish college students and public intellectuals, including the philosopher Horace M. Kallen. At Harvard, they founded an influential student organization known as the Menorah Association in 1906 and later the Menorah Journal, which became a leading voice of Jewish public opinion in the 1920s. In response to the idea that the American melting pot would erase all cultural differences, the Menorah Association advocated a pluralist America that would accommodate a thriving Jewish culture while bringing Jewishness into mainstream American life.
About the Speaker: DANIEL GREENE is Vice President for Research and Academic Programs at the Newberry, Chicago’s independent research library. Greene is a US historian who specializes in ethnicity, pluralism, and American identity. Before coming to the Newberry, he was a historian at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. Greene is an Affiliated Faculty member of the history department at the University of Illinois Chicago. He earned his PhD in history at the University of Chicago.
