Ep. 79: Clyde Barrow on the Life and Times of Charles A. Beard

“Beard resigned and wrote a very scathing letter of resignation, which is still read today. But he was such a beloved figure at Columbia, he actually provoked several days of protests and riots on the campus, of students demanding that he return and not be subject to this inquisition, and several other prominent faculty resigned right in his wake as well because of it.”Clyde Barrow returns to the podcast to talk about Charles Beard, the subject of his 2000 book, More Than a Historian: The Political and Economic Thought of Charles A. Beard. Beard was one of the foremost American intellectuals of the 20th century, and the author of several important books, including An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. Clyde discusses the state of constitutional critique during the early 20th century and Beard’s place within it; Beard’s analysis of judicial review and checks and balances; his relationship with the English Labour Party, the German Social Democratic Party, FDR, and the New Deal Democrats; and why Beard should be understood as a socialist but not a Marxist. I last spoke with Clyde about the radical sociologist C. Wright Mills.