The Authoritarian Personality

Annual Conference of the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism
Co-sponsored by a generous grant from the Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Fund, and the Jason M. Folk Memorial Fund created in loving memory by Elyssa ‘03 and William Friedland.
Our conference focuses on the landmark study, first published in 1950, under the title, The Authoritarian Personality, which was just re-issued by Verso Press in August 2019. The book was a collaboration between Theodor W. Adorno and a group of academic psychologists working at the University of California, Berkeley: Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson, and Nevitt Sanford. Adorno had originally intended that the book be called “The Fascist Character and the Measurement of Fascist Trends” to reflect the political problem at its heart. Anchored in case study, The Authoritarian Personality reflects the aspirations of early critical theory to pursue empirical social science. But it is also a highly theoretical work, a systematic inquiry into the psychological structure of fascism, racism and antisemitism.
The conference will take place over two days (February 14-15, 2020) at the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale University.