Professional
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Education
1907 Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) Saint Peter's College, Jersey City, NJ
1908 Master of Arts (M.A.) Saint Peter's College, Jersey City, NJ
1917 Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) Columbia University, New York, NY Major: Philosophy
1930 Honorary Ph.D. Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
1968 Honorary Ph.D. Long Island University
1974 Honorary Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) University of Southern California
1975 Honorary Ph.D. Pepperdine University
1979 Honorary Ph.D. Saint Peter's College, Jersey City, NJ
Professional Experience
1907 The New York Evening Journal Crime Reporter
1907 - 1911 Seton Hall, South Orange, NJ Seminarian, Librarian, and Instructor of Latin, French, and Geometry
1910 - 1912 Newark Public Schools, Newark, NJ Substitute Teacher
1912 - 1913 Ferrer Modern School, New York, NY Teacher
1914 - 1919 New York City Board of Education Lecturer
1914 - 1921 Labor Temple, New York, NY Lecturer
1917 - 1918 Columbia University, New York, NY Instructor of Philosophy, Extension Teaching
1918 University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR Lecturer
1918 University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK Lecturer
1921 - 1927 Labor Temple School, New York, NY Director and Lecturer
1923 Kansas City Academy, Kansas City, KS Lecturer
1927 The Francis Bacon Award for Humanizing Knowledge Juror For outstanding works of non-fiction that carry on the conscious adventure of humanizing knowledge. Sponsored by The Forum magazine and book publisher Simon and Schuster.
1927 New York World Telegram (Scripps-Howard News Service), New York, NY Reporter Durant was contracted specifically to write a series of articles on the infamous Snyder/Gray murder trials.
1927 Cosmos Syndicate, New York, NY Feature Writer Durant was contracted to write a series of 50 articles titled The Story of Civilization.
1928 Scripps-Howard News Service, New York, NY Reporter Durant was contracted specifically to write a series of six articles about the 1928 political conventions.
1930 - 1934 Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY Director of Alumni Reading Course - School of Extension Teaching and Adult Education In a 1929 magazine article, Dr. Durant claimed he could make any adult a philosopher and scholar with seven hours a week over a four year period. Dr. D. Walter Morton, director of the Syracuse Extension School, invited Dr. Durant to test his claim as a faculty member of Syracuse University. Classes began in January of 1931 with a curated list of 80-90 books personally selected by Dr. Durant.
1935 University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA Instructor June 24-August 5, 1935 Course One: "Introduction to Philosophy" Course Two: "The Greater Philosophers"
1938 University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA Instructor June 27-August 8, 1938 Course One: "Introduction to Philosophy" Course Two: "The Greater Philosophers" "There were two of us teaching [philosophy] at UCLA that summer. The other professor was Will Durant. I met him at a reception given for the summer session faculty. He discovered that I had been a graduate student at Columbia, as he had been, and said that we should get together and talk about Columbia and other matters. We never did. He was lionized among the movie set, and I never saw him after that reception." - Philosopher Edward W. Strong, later chancellor of the University of California at Berkley
Of interest to note, sometime between 1943-1944 Will Durant was invited to teach at Harvard by William Ernest Hocking, who gave him the option of teaching philosophy or history; Durant turned down the offer owing to his busy writing schedule.
1964 The Fall of the Roman Empire (Film) Consultant American epic film produced by Samuel Bronston, directed by Anthony Mann, and starring Sophia Loren and Alec Guinness, among others. Will Durant was engaged as a historical consultant to advise on period detail and plot. He also wrote the voice over that starts film and contributed a a prologue, primarily taken from Caesar and Christ, for the movie's souvenir program.
Professional Associations
1910 Social Science Club of Newark, NJ Founding Member Regional club formed by lovers of literature and ideas. Meetings were held at local libraries and bookstores during which members would read a prepared paper as the cue for a general discussion.
1918 The League of Free Nations Association Member Originally named the Committee on American Policy in International Relations, the League of Free Nations Association (later rebranded as the Foreign Policy Association) was formed in 1918 by 41 progressive-minded activists and prominent intellectuals (including Columbia University faculty Will Durant, Charles Beard, and later John Dewey) to support US President Woodrow Wilson's efforts to achieve a just peace, with his famous speech and proposal of the Fourteen Points, which included the idea of a world organization, later to be called the League of Nations. The organization included future influential Americans from both sides of the political spectrum, including John Foster Dulles and Eleanor Roosevelt.
1919 The Committee of Forty-Eight Founding Member The Committee of Forty-Eight was an American liberal political association established in 1919 in the hope of creating a new political party for social reform to stand in opposition to the increasingly conservative Republican and Democratic parties. Named in recognition of the 48 states of the US to signify the desire to construct a broad national movement, the moderate progressives of the Committee of Forty-Eight attempted without success to form such a third party with sympathetic activists from the labor movement in 1920. The group (commonly known as "The Forty-Eighters") then became one of the key constituents in the Conference for Progressive Political Action in 1922, a movement culminating in the independent candidacy of Robert M. La Follette Sr. for President of the United States in 1924.
1919 The League of Oppressed Peoples Sponsor The League of Oppressed Peoples was a New York-based movement started by a group of American liberals with the expressed purpose of concentrating American protests against continued imperialism and oppression on the part of certain governments, particularly the British government. Initially formed in 1917 as the “League of Small and Subject Nationalities”, the organization relaunched itself as the League of Oppressed Peoples in 1919. The organization focused much of its efforts on behalf of China, India, and Ireland, as well as the Jewish diaspora. Will Durant was approached and accepted a role as a sponsor of the organization at some point between November 3 and November 10, 1919. The League of Oppressed Peoples was eventually absorbed by the League Against Imperialism.
1926 American Association for Adult Education Member The American Association for Adult Education (A.A.A.E.) was founded in 1926 as an organization to promote continuing education and education for adults. The Association was absorbed by the Adult Education Association of the U.S.A. (A.E.A.) in 1951.
1927 The Town Hall Club of New York Committee Member The Town Hall Club was incorporated for the purposes of developing a finer citizenship, furthering the cause of good government, improving social conditions, and promoting literature and the arts; they established and maintained club rooms, a library, and other facilities which provided a center for men and women who desired to cooperate in the accomplishment of the club's purposes.
1928 Sacco-Vanzetti National League Executive Committee Member The Sacco-Vanzetti National League was originally organized under the name Citizens National Committee. Their purpose was to prevent the execution and draw national attention to the case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti - Italian-born American anarchists who were controversially convicted of murdering two people during a 1920 armed robbery. After Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in 1927, the group changed its name to the Sacco-Vanzetti National League to keep the memory of the men alive.
1929 All-World Gandhi Fellowship Vice President Organization dedicated to winning friends for India through love, respect, and appreciation of her cultures, religions, and philosophies as well as educating the public on the conditions in India at the time.
1930 The American Eugenics Society Member The American Eugenics Society (AES) was established in the United States by Madison Grant, Harry H. Laughlin, Henry Crampton, Irving Fisher, and Henry F. Osborn in 1926 to promote eugenics education programs for the public. The AES described eugenics as the study of improving the genetic composition of humans through controlled reproduction of different races and classes of people. The AES aided smaller eugenic efforts such as the Galton Society in New York, New York, and the Race Betterment Foundation in Battle Creek, Michigan, and it influenced eugenic policy set by the US Supreme Court in cases including Buck v. Bell (1927) and Skinner v. Oklahoma (1942). The AES was renamed the Society for the Study of Social Biology in 1972.
1932 National Home Library Foundation Advisor The National Home Library Foundation was established in 1932 with the purpose of promoting reading, education, and culture; the organization accomplished its aims through printed announcements, radio broadcasts, lectures, exhibits, public meetings, classes, and conferences.
1933 National Committee to Aid Victims of German Fascism Member The National Committee to Aid Victims of German Fascism was organized by Workers International Relief, an adjunct to the international Communist Party, following the rise to power of Adolf Hitler in Germany. The goal was to raise enough funds to save the maximum amount of persecuted individuals in Nazi Germany.
1934 The American Library of Nazi-Banned Books Advisory Board Member The American Library of Nazi-Banned Books was inaugurated with fanfare before a crowd of 500 guests in December 1934 at the Brooklyn Jewish Center of New York. The Library was a response to the Nazi book fires of May 1933. It was officially opened by Albert Einstein, who hoped that this American library might snatch some of the banned literary works from oblivion. The Library was openly modelled on the so-called "Library of the Burned Books" in Paris, which had been opened by German exiles in May 1934.
1938 Friends of Democracy, Inc. Member Friends of Democracy, Inc. (FOD) was organized in Kansas City, Missouri by Unitarian minister Leon M. Birkhead in 1937. The group presented itself as "a non-partisan, non-sectarian, non-profit, anti-totalitarian propaganda agency." The group moved to New York City in 1938 where they had an active branch. The group compiled files on over 800 pro NAZI Germany organizations in America. The group published journals entitled The Propaganda Battlefront and Democracy’s Battle.
1940 The Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies Committee Member The Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies (CDAAA) was an American political action group formed as the Germans launched their long-anticipated Western Offensive. It became the leading voice supporting efforts to aid the Allies which, with the fall of France (June 1940), meant advocating a pro-British policy to oppose Axis (meaning primarily German) aggression. It took the President Roosevelt's line that suppling American military equipment and supplies to Britain was the best way to keep the United States out of the European war.
1941 Committee for Inter-American Cooperation Committee Member Organization created with the purpose of fostering closer cultural, political and economic relations between the U.S. and Latin America and countering the effects of fascist propaganda and infiltration in the Americas.
1944 The Mobilization for Spiritual Ideals Governing Board Member More popularly known as Spiritual Mobilization, the organization was dedicated to spreading libertarian anti-tax, noninterventionist, and free market ideals through its 17,000 clerical representatives. Its publication "Faith and Freedom" featured the writings of a number of libertarian advocates.
1944 Independent Voters' Committee of the Arts and Sciences for Roosevelt Committee Member "The Independent Voters Committee of the Arts and Sciences for Roosevelt" was formed to support Franklin Delano Roosevelt's controversial run for a fourth term as president of the United States. After the 1944 election, the group reconstituted itself as the "Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions" with an ongoing mission to extend democracy in the US and abroad, promote worldwide peace through the UN, and provide support for policies that would lead to full employment and a "decent standard of living for all." It had subcommittees for theater, radio, literature, film, art, science and technology, music, education, medicine and journalism. In 1946 it had a broad-based membership of New Deal supporters although Communists had played a significant covert role in creating and running the organization.
1945 Declaration of Interdependence, Inc. President On April 8, 1944 American philosopher and historian Will Durant was approached by two leaders of the Jewish and Christian faiths, Meyer David and Dr. Christian Richard about starting "a movement, to raise moral standards." He suggested instead that they start a movement against racial intolerance and outlined his ideas for a "Declaration of Interdependence." The movement for the declaration, Declaration of INTERdependence, Inc., was launched at a gala dinner at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on March 22, 1945 attended by over 400 people including Thomas Mann and Bette Davis. The Declaration was read into the Congressional Record on October 1, 1945 by Ellis E. Patterson.
1946 Albert Einstein Foundation for Higher Learning, Inc. Sponsor In 1946, the Albert Einstein Foundation for Higher Learning, Inc. was established in order to raise funds for the founding of a “university without quotas…where no barriers exist because of race, sex, color, or creed.” This university was to be, “a Jewish contribution to American education” and “a great school where democracy is enhanced through its practice.” The foundation subsequently purchased the 100 acre Waltham campus, and the name of Middlesex University was changed to Brandeis University on March 13th, 1947, and the charter to grant degrees was transferred.
1958 Pythagorean Philosophical Society International Member The Pythagorean Philosophical Society International was established in 1955 in Athens, Greece to promote, facilitate and increase cultural interchange among organizations devoted to Pythagorean philosophy and disseminate Pythagorean teachings and their practical achievements. |