In Detroit for the ASLH conference? I'm at the Fraser Center Wayne State at 4 pm this afternoon to talk about the archives that brought the story of #TheRadicalFund to life. @reutherlibrary.bsky.social labor.wayne.edu/event-flyers...

Interesting and fun convo with @jonwiener.bsky.social and @thenation.com about resonances between the 2020s and the 1920s: www.thenation.com/podcast/arch...

Smart questions from @zelizer.bsky.social in this conversation earlier today. Did the right co-opt progressives’ most generative 20th c tactics? #TheRadicalFund open.substack.com/pub/johnfabi...

I'm at the Warren Center @harvard.edu today at 4 pm in Robinson Hall's lower library to talk about The Radical Fund. Come on out. I promise good pictures!

Lookong back to look ahead—thoughtful and revelatory by @nickperkins.bsky.social on Mamdani and Walter Lippmann. jacobin.com/2025/11/lunn...

Harlem Congressman Vito Marcantonio is Mamdani’s closing message—and practiced at the Garland Fund’s law firm. Of course. #TheRadicalFund is all around us. @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social

TOC, "Gerontocracy in America" (June 2026) us.macmillan.com/books/978037...

New HistPhil post: David Pozen continues our book forum on @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social' s The Radical Fund, questioning whether, given evolution in nonprofit law since the fund's heydey, it can serve as a model for contemporary philanthropy seeing to "upend America." histphil.org/2025/11/03/c...

Oh my, the 2020s bidding hard to look like the 1920s. First Billie Eilish, now Gatsby and the Roaring 20s at Mar-a-Lago #TheRadicalFund @simonandschuster.bsky.social

Radicalism (in its Latin sense at least?) is fast becoming a keyword for the age. @fotoole.bsky.social is lucid in the @nybooks.com www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

Radical constitutional change is in the air; now Sai Prakash & @casssunstein.bsky.social are in the mix with a fascinating account of social movements and elites. But what if elites are also a social movement to be explained? #TheRadicalFund virginialawreview.org/articles/rad...

A new pod episode! Come for the nudist beach scenes from the 1920s—stay for fights over the material foundations of 20th-c liberalisms.

Over at HistPhil by @bensoskis.bsky.social a forum on The Radical Fund starts with an essay / post by yours truly on political nonviolence and the tax code, 2020s and 1920s. @simonandschuster.bsky.social histphil.org/2025/10/27/w...

Laura Weinrib @harvard.edu gets it better than I did! The Radical Fund's internal battles in the 1920s presaged New Deal-era fights over the power to decide in collective bargaining, in civil rights, and elsewhere. Power, not rights. @jackbalkin.bsky.social balkin.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-...

Now fists are flying! Larry Kramer at LSE says The Radical Fund is "beautifully written, deeply engrossing," and a "tour de force"--but also that it's "not really about the Garland Fund"! Has Larry seen to the secret soul of the book? balkin.blogspot.com/2025/10/wher...

My friend @marydudziak.bsky.social calls The Radical Fund a compelling salve for chaotic times—but has doubts! Is money the way out? balkin.blogspot.com/2025/10/what...

David Pozen @columbiauniversity.bsky.social offers a shot across the bow: does 21st c nonprofit tax law make a Garland Fund 2.0 impossible? balkin.blogspot.com/2025/10/coul...

Yale Professor @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social went back a century and found our present The Radical Fund tells the story of Charles Garland who refused his inheritance to see it fuel resistance Subscribe free to watch First Draft with @sjdemas.bsky.social now www.lincolnsquare.media/p/a-1920s-ro...

Looking forward to this one, in just a few minutes live on substack at 11!

Over at Balkinization @jackbalkin.bsky.social, my old dean at Columbia Law David Schizer sees the Garland Fund as a quintessential philanthropic incubator of new ideas. He also notes it was riddled with conflicts of interest. Flaw? Or secret sauce! balkin.blogspot.com/2025/10/less...

Talked with @emilybazelon on @Slate.com Gabfest Reads about The Radical Fund. Don't miss the turn to Lippmann near the end -- and the fund's prophetic insight that censorship is only a one piece of a free democratic discourse. @Simonandschuster.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdVk...

Read wise @jamalgreene.bsky.social on how to make change from the rubble of a failing state—and on an abiding question: “whether to pursue social change through corrupted existing institutions or whether to try, at great risk, to build new ones.” balkin.blogspot.com/2025/10/warl...

The @wsj.com calls The Radical Fund “fascinating”—and says it would be at the center of the fight between liberal funders and the Trump administration were it around today. www.wsj.com/arts-culture...

Gorgeous on Pennsylvania Ave in DC this afternoon.

Over at @jackbalkin.bsky.social’s Balkinization, David Bernstein proposes that The Radical Fund is a cautionary tale of liberalism’s vulnerability to cooperation by illiberal forces—and takes up the CPUSA’s efforts to capture the fund as a case study. balkin.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-...

My friend and mentor Willy Forbath asks a big question: were social democracy’s compromises a century ago generative or constraining? The debate is on! balkin.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-...

The great Risa Goluboff @uvalaw.bsky.social says The Radical Fund is of a piece with the long civil rights movement literature. Is she right? Or is it a critique of the LCRM’s starting premise? Maybe both! @simonandschuster.bsky.social balkin.blogspot.com/2025/10/putt...

In DC tonight? I’ll be talking with @davidcole-gtown.bsky.social about progressivism in its wilderness years—and a lost story of experiments for a better world. At @politicsprose.bsky.social on Conn Ave tonight at 7

Oh my, a review from Michelle Adams @umichlaw.bsky.social calls The Radical Fund “a powerful and under-appreciated story” and an “invitation to reconsider what democratic education still demands.” @simonandschuster.bsky.social balkin.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-...

Come join us this evening @nyhistory.bsky.social for a lost history of the 1920s -- and the paths that got us through eerily similar democratic crisis a century ago. With the great David Blight, 6:30 pm at 77th & CPW. @simonandschuster.bsky.social

Pub day character! Charles Garland: Handsome heir to Wall Street fortune, critic of inheritance, and founder of utopian farming communes. His money incubated social movements during liberalism's lean years, even as his own life spiraled out of control. @SimonandSchuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund

1 day to publication, it's Woodrow Wilson: Wartime president whose draconian speech repression campaign & simultaneous program of propaganda shaped the Garland Fund's approach to politics; his 1913 firing of James Weldon Johnson helped shape the course of the 1920s. @SimonandSchuster.bsky.social

Talking with @leahlitman.bsky.social and @kateshaw.bsky.social on @strictscrutiny.bsky.social about #TheRadicalFund was fun. Like a fantasy novel, says Litman--but it's history, replies Shaw! Dear reader, you will have to decide for yourself. @simonandschuster.bsky.social crooked.com/podcast/will...

Countdown 3, Walter White: Executive secretary of the NAACP beginning in 1929, author, anti-lynching crusader, and co-architect of the NAACP-Garland Fund litigation plan. White's omission of W.E.B. Du Bois from the final grant helped push Du Bois out of the organization he founded. #TheRadicalFund

Character countdown 4, Harold Ware: director of clandestine Soviet spy ring who took advantage of an ill Charles Garland to seize the dwindling Fund's resources for Party front groups. Lover of fast cars. @SimonandSchuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund

Character countdown 5, Robert Wagner: German immigrant and U.S. senator, sponsor of New Deal labor law that drew on a decade of Garland Fund-sponsored intellectual ferment to remake American capitalism. @SimonandSchuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund

Did the @latimes.com really call The Radical Fund a #HamiltontheMusical story for the 20th century? Thanks for reading, @thevalorieclark.bsky.social. www.latimes.com/entertainmen...

Character countdown 6, Marie Tudor. Mother of Charles Garland, free spirit, patron of writers and artists like Georgia O'Keefe and Kahlil Gibran. @SimonandSchuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund

Character 7, Carlo Tresca: Italian anarchist editor, notorious gadfly and bon vivant, lover of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Tresca was the Garland Fund beneficiary who connected the Fund to Sacco & Vanzetti. Assassinated by unknown assailants on Fifth Avenue in 1943. @Simonandschuster.bsky.social

Character countdown 8, Norman Thomas: Presbyterian minister, Socialist Party presidential candidate, bitter anticommunist, and advocate of industrial democracy, Served as Garland Fund director from 1922 to 1941. @Simonandschuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund

My new essay describes the CIO, the UAW, and the industrial union as building American democracy out of the ashes 100 yrs ago. Where are the parallels today? @uawarchivist.bsky.social @uaw.org @lizshuler.bsky.social @aflcio.org @seiu.org @lawcha.bsky.social @aft.org www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/o...

Political violence, post-pandemic one-party rule, vast economic inequality, and immigration backlash? The 2020s are the 1920s all over again--and that may show us a way out. Adapted from my book, to be published next week. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/o...

Character countdown 9, Ossian Sweet: Black physician, Detroit resident and race riot survivor, murder defendant and Clarence Darrow client; his story dramatized the Great Migration, and the Garland Fund quietly financed his defense. @SimonandSchuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund

Character countdown 10, Bester William Steele: Locomotive fireman in all-Black union of railroad workers whose case carried forward the first Garland Fund-connected attack on Jim Crow to reach SCOTUS--not against schools, but against all-white unions. @Simonandschuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund

Character countdown 11, Upton Sinclair: Iconoclastic author of muckraking bestseller The Jungle about the horrors of labor in Chicago's slaughter yards; critic of concentrated control of the press and cofounder of the Garland Fund in 1922. @Simonandschuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund

Character countdown 12, John Scopes: High school science teacher, football coach, and evolution case defendant, whose famous 1925 trial and spectacle in Dayton, Tennessee, was dreamed up by the ACLU and financed by the Garland Fund. @Simonandschuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund

Great convos at @plawpu.bsky.social volume 3… Huge thanks to @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social for a fantastic discussion!

Had the pleasure of hearing John talk about this forthcoming book today. Really terrific — check it out!

Countdown 13, the Scottsboro 9: young Black men convicted of rape in farcical 1931 Alabama trials. The Garland Fund financed campaigns by both sides of the bitter NAACP-Communist Party rivalry, transforming the NAACP-Fund litigation campaign in the process. @simonandschuster.bsky.social