Max Ascoli

Max Ascoli (June 25, 1898 – January 1, 1978) was an Italian-American professor of political philosophy and law at The New School for Social Research.

Life and work Italy Ascoli was born in Ferrara, Italy on June 25, 1898, into an Italian Jewish family. He was the only child of Enrico Ascoli, a coal and lumber merchant, and Adriana Finzi. In 1920, he graduated in Law from the University of Ferrara. In 1921, he published a critical study of French socialist Georges Sorel. In 1924, he published a biography of philosopher Benedetto Croce. In 1928, he graduated in Philosophy from the University of Rome. but he was arrested. He accepted a post at the University of Cagliari (Sardinia) in 1929. Opposing the Italian fascist regime, he went into exile.

United States In 1931, Ascoli received a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship and moved to the United States. He was active in the Mazzini Society, an anti-fascist organization founded in 1939 by Italian intellectuals who had fled fascist Italy.

For many years, Ascoli taught at the New School for Social Research, becoming dean of the Graduate School (1939–41). He left the New School to serve the government for two years under Nelson A. Rockefeller, then Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs. He then went on to focus on a new magazine.

The Reporter and art In 1949, Ascoli joined James Reston to found The Reporter, an influential liberal magazine for some two decades. Its circulation peaked at 215,000 readers. In 1968, Ascoli merged the publication with Harper's Magazine.

Personal life and death Ascoli was married twice. His first wife was Italian poet Anna Maria Cochetti (pen name Anna Maria Armi); he divorced her in 1940. His second wife was Marion Rosenwald Ascoli, whom he married in 1940. Marion was the daughter of CEO of the Sears, Roebuck and Company, Julius Rosenwald. (She was also previously married to Alfred K. Stern, whom she divorced in 1936.) She had been chairwoman and president of the Citizens Committee for Children of New York and previously president of the New York Fund for Children and of the Northside Center for Child Development in Harlem. Marion Ascoli died in 1990, aged 88. Their son is Peter Ascoli, author of Julius Rosenwald, a book about his maternal grandfather.

Ascoli died after a long illness at his home in Manhattan on January 1, 1978, at the age of 79.