Felix Morley

Felix Morley
Born
Felix Muskett Morley

January 6, 1894
Haverford, Pennsylvania
DiedMarch 13, 1982
EducationHaverford College, University of Oxford, Brookings Institution
Occupation(s)Journalist, College President
Notable workThe Society of Nations

Felix Muskett Morley (January 6, 1894 – March 13, 1982) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and college administrator from the United States.

Biography

Morley was born in Haverford, Pennsylvania, his father being the mathematician Frank Morley. Like his brothers, Christopher and Frank, Felix was educated at Haverford College and earned a Rhodes Scholarship to University of Oxford in England. He earned a Guggenheim Fellowship to study the League of Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, which resulted in his book The Society of Nations (1933) and a Ph.D. from the Brookings Institution. Morley was raised within and remained a member of the Religious Society of Friends or Quakers.

From 1933 to 1940, Morley worked as editor for The Washington Post, winning, in 1936, the paper's first Pulitzer Prize, for his "distinguished editorial writing during the year." The Pulitzer Prize came after the Franklin D. Roosevelt's National Industrial Recovery Act was nullified by the U.S. Supreme Court. Morley had written that Roosevelt "turned his back on the traditions and principles of his party and gave tremendous support stimulus to the move for a complete political realignment in the United States."[1]

In August 1940, Morley was fired from his position as editor of the Post by the paper's owner, Eugene Meyer. Meyer, an staunch economic conservative and opponent of the New Deal, nevertheless was a major proponent of Roosevelt's interventionist foreign policy and the need for America to support Great Britain in the fight against Hitler. That July, the Post, under Morley's direction, published an editorial criticizing Roosevelt's interventionism, arguing that the Monroe Doctrine not only pledged the United States to defend the Western Hemisphere from European intervention but also pledged the United States not to intervene in the affairs of Europe. The editorial argued that the best way to defend American interests was to defend the Western Hemisphere and not to involve itself with European quarrels. Morley's anti-interventionist editorial offended Meyer, who fired him a few weeks later. Meyer assured that the Post would only publish pro-interventionist editorials thereafter.[2]

Later in 1940, Morley went on to succeed William Wistar Comfort as President of Haverford College.[3] He also supported Wendell Willkie that year as presidential candidate. Morley said he lost faith in Roosevelt after his Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937 to pack the Supreme Court and that Roosevelt had a "debonair attitude of pulling tricks out of a bag."[4]

Morley was one of the founding editors of Human Events in 1944, where he opposed federal overreach and foreign interventionism.[5] However, he left Human Events in 1950 because of its aggressive military stance towards the Soviet Union.[6] He was also one of the founding members of the classical liberal Mont Pelerin Society in 1946.

After resigning from Haverford College, he continued his journalistic work at NBC and for Nation's Business. He published his memoirs, For the Record, in 1977. Other books he published after the war were The Power in the People (1949), The Foreign Policy of the United States (1951) and Freedom and Federalism (1959).[1] Also published, in 1956, is his utopian novel Gumption Island.

References

  1. ^ a b Weil, Martin (1982-03-15). "Felix Morley, Scholar, Educator and Journalist, Dies at 88". The Washington Post. p. B4.
  2. ^ Steele, Richard W. (1985). Propaganda in an Open Society: The Roosevelt Administration and the Media, 1933-1941. London, England: Greenwood Press. pp. 100–1.
  3. ^ (3 April 1940). Felix Morley Named Head of Haverford, The New York Times
  4. ^ "Felix Morley Backs Wilkie". The New York Times. September 9, 1940. p. 18.
  5. ^ Gillian Peele, 'American Conservatism in Historical Perspective', in Crisis of Conservatism? The Republican Party, the Conservative Movement, & American Politics After Bush, Gillian Peele, Joel D. Aberbach (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, p.21
  6. ^ Nash, Georg H. (1998). The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America, Since 1945. Wilmington, Del: Intercollegiate Studies Institute. pp. 112. ISBN 1-882926-20-X.

Sources

Further reading