John Fabian Witt
@johnfabianwitt.bsky.social
Duffy Prof @YaleLawSch, legal history. Germantown born and bred. Fisherman, orchardist, baseball. Profile photo sitdowners park in Flint. The Radical Fund is out from Simon & Schuster.
Many thanks to the @brennancenter.org for compelling conversation about #TheRadicalFund this week. Esp nice to reconnect with former student Lauren Miller Karalunas @yalelawschool-yls.bsky.social
November 21, 2025 at 2:27 PM
Many thanks to the @brennancenter.org for compelling conversation about #TheRadicalFund this week. Esp nice to reconnect with former student Lauren Miller Karalunas @yalelawschool-yls.bsky.social
I'm at the Warren Center @harvard.edu today at 4 pm in Robinson Hall's lower library to talk about The Radical Fund. Come on out. I promise good pictures!
November 6, 2025 at 7:54 PM
I'm at the Warren Center @harvard.edu today at 4 pm in Robinson Hall's lower library to talk about The Radical Fund. Come on out. I promise good pictures!
Lookong back to look ahead—thoughtful and revelatory by @nickperkins.bsky.social on Mamdani and Walter Lippmann.
jacobin.com/2025/11/lunn...
jacobin.com/2025/11/lunn...
November 6, 2025 at 4:15 PM
Lookong back to look ahead—thoughtful and revelatory by @nickperkins.bsky.social on Mamdani and Walter Lippmann.
jacobin.com/2025/11/lunn...
jacobin.com/2025/11/lunn...
Radicalism (in its Latin sense at least?) is fast becoming a keyword for the age. @fotoole.bsky.social is lucid in the @nybooks.com www.nybooks.com/articles/202...
November 1, 2025 at 12:35 PM
Radicalism (in its Latin sense at least?) is fast becoming a keyword for the age. @fotoole.bsky.social is lucid in the @nybooks.com www.nybooks.com/articles/202...
Gorgeous on Pennsylvania Ave in DC this afternoon.
October 18, 2025 at 9:10 PM
Gorgeous on Pennsylvania Ave in DC this afternoon.
In DC tonight? I’ll be talking with @davidcole-gtown.bsky.social about progressivism in its wilderness years—and a lost story of experiments for a better world. At @politicsprose.bsky.social on Conn Ave tonight at 7
October 16, 2025 at 3:55 PM
In DC tonight? I’ll be talking with @davidcole-gtown.bsky.social about progressivism in its wilderness years—and a lost story of experiments for a better world. At @politicsprose.bsky.social on Conn Ave tonight at 7
Come join us this evening @nyhistory.bsky.social for a lost history of the 1920s -- and the paths that got us through eerily similar democratic crisis a century ago. With the great David Blight, 6:30 pm at 77th & CPW. @simonandschuster.bsky.social
October 14, 2025 at 1:09 PM
Come join us this evening @nyhistory.bsky.social for a lost history of the 1920s -- and the paths that got us through eerily similar democratic crisis a century ago. With the great David Blight, 6:30 pm at 77th & CPW. @simonandschuster.bsky.social
Pub day character! Charles Garland: Handsome heir to Wall Street fortune, critic of inheritance, and founder of utopian farming communes. His money incubated social movements during liberalism's lean years, even as his own life spiraled out of control. @SimonandSchuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund
October 14, 2025 at 12:26 PM
Pub day character! Charles Garland: Handsome heir to Wall Street fortune, critic of inheritance, and founder of utopian farming communes. His money incubated social movements during liberalism's lean years, even as his own life spiraled out of control. @SimonandSchuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund
1 day to publication, it's Woodrow Wilson: Wartime president whose draconian speech repression campaign & simultaneous program of propaganda shaped the Garland Fund's approach to politics; his 1913 firing of James Weldon Johnson helped shape the course of the 1920s. @SimonandSchuster.bsky.social
October 13, 2025 at 1:18 PM
1 day to publication, it's Woodrow Wilson: Wartime president whose draconian speech repression campaign & simultaneous program of propaganda shaped the Garland Fund's approach to politics; his 1913 firing of James Weldon Johnson helped shape the course of the 1920s. @SimonandSchuster.bsky.social
Countdown 3, Walter White: Executive secretary of the NAACP beginning in 1929, author, anti-lynching crusader, and co-architect of the NAACP-Garland Fund litigation plan. White's omission of W.E.B. Du Bois from the final grant helped push Du Bois out of the organization he founded. #TheRadicalFund
October 12, 2025 at 2:15 PM
Countdown 3, Walter White: Executive secretary of the NAACP beginning in 1929, author, anti-lynching crusader, and co-architect of the NAACP-Garland Fund litigation plan. White's omission of W.E.B. Du Bois from the final grant helped push Du Bois out of the organization he founded. #TheRadicalFund
Character countdown 4, Harold Ware: director of clandestine Soviet spy ring who took advantage of an ill Charles Garland to seize the dwindling Fund's resources for Party front groups. Lover of fast cars. @SimonandSchuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund
October 11, 2025 at 1:45 PM
Character countdown 4, Harold Ware: director of clandestine Soviet spy ring who took advantage of an ill Charles Garland to seize the dwindling Fund's resources for Party front groups. Lover of fast cars. @SimonandSchuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund
Character countdown 5, Robert Wagner: German immigrant and U.S. senator, sponsor of New Deal labor law that drew on a decade of Garland Fund-sponsored intellectual ferment to remake American capitalism. @SimonandSchuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund
October 10, 2025 at 12:15 PM
Character countdown 5, Robert Wagner: German immigrant and U.S. senator, sponsor of New Deal labor law that drew on a decade of Garland Fund-sponsored intellectual ferment to remake American capitalism. @SimonandSchuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund
Did the @latimes.com really call The Radical Fund a #HamiltontheMusical story for the 20th century? Thanks for reading, @thevalorieclark.bsky.social.
www.latimes.com/entertainmen...
www.latimes.com/entertainmen...
October 9, 2025 at 3:20 PM
Did the @latimes.com really call The Radical Fund a #HamiltontheMusical story for the 20th century? Thanks for reading, @thevalorieclark.bsky.social.
www.latimes.com/entertainmen...
www.latimes.com/entertainmen...
Character countdown 6, Marie Tudor. Mother of Charles Garland, free spirit, patron of writers and artists like Georgia O'Keefe and Kahlil Gibran. @SimonandSchuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund
October 9, 2025 at 12:45 PM
Character countdown 6, Marie Tudor. Mother of Charles Garland, free spirit, patron of writers and artists like Georgia O'Keefe and Kahlil Gibran. @SimonandSchuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund
Character 7, Carlo Tresca: Italian anarchist editor, notorious gadfly and bon vivant, lover of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Tresca was the Garland Fund beneficiary who connected the Fund to Sacco & Vanzetti. Assassinated by unknown assailants on Fifth Avenue in 1943. @Simonandschuster.bsky.social
October 8, 2025 at 12:47 PM
Character 7, Carlo Tresca: Italian anarchist editor, notorious gadfly and bon vivant, lover of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Tresca was the Garland Fund beneficiary who connected the Fund to Sacco & Vanzetti. Assassinated by unknown assailants on Fifth Avenue in 1943. @Simonandschuster.bsky.social
Character countdown 8, Norman Thomas: Presbyterian minister, Socialist Party presidential candidate, bitter anticommunist, and advocate of industrial democracy, Served as Garland Fund director from 1922 to 1941. @Simonandschuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund
October 7, 2025 at 11:04 AM
Character countdown 8, Norman Thomas: Presbyterian minister, Socialist Party presidential candidate, bitter anticommunist, and advocate of industrial democracy, Served as Garland Fund director from 1922 to 1941. @Simonandschuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund
Character countdown 9, Ossian Sweet: Black physician, Detroit resident and race riot survivor, murder defendant and Clarence Darrow client; his story dramatized the Great Migration, and the Garland Fund quietly financed his defense. @SimonandSchuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund
October 5, 2025 at 5:42 PM
Character countdown 9, Ossian Sweet: Black physician, Detroit resident and race riot survivor, murder defendant and Clarence Darrow client; his story dramatized the Great Migration, and the Garland Fund quietly financed his defense. @SimonandSchuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund
Character countdown 10, Bester William Steele: Locomotive fireman in all-Black union of railroad workers whose case carried forward the first Garland Fund-connected attack on Jim Crow to reach SCOTUS--not against schools, but against all-white unions. @Simonandschuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund
October 4, 2025 at 2:15 PM
Character countdown 10, Bester William Steele: Locomotive fireman in all-Black union of railroad workers whose case carried forward the first Garland Fund-connected attack on Jim Crow to reach SCOTUS--not against schools, but against all-white unions. @Simonandschuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund
Character countdown 11, Upton Sinclair: Iconoclastic author of muckraking bestseller The Jungle about the horrors of labor in Chicago's slaughter yards; critic of concentrated control of the press and cofounder of the Garland Fund in 1922. @Simonandschuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund
October 3, 2025 at 1:15 PM
Character countdown 11, Upton Sinclair: Iconoclastic author of muckraking bestseller The Jungle about the horrors of labor in Chicago's slaughter yards; critic of concentrated control of the press and cofounder of the Garland Fund in 1922. @Simonandschuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund
Character countdown 12, John Scopes: High school science teacher, football coach, and evolution case defendant, whose famous 1925 trial and spectacle in Dayton, Tennessee, was dreamed up by the ACLU and financed by the Garland Fund. @Simonandschuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund
October 2, 2025 at 12:17 PM
Character countdown 12, John Scopes: High school science teacher, football coach, and evolution case defendant, whose famous 1925 trial and spectacle in Dayton, Tennessee, was dreamed up by the ACLU and financed by the Garland Fund. @Simonandschuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund
Countdown 13, the Scottsboro 9: young Black men convicted of rape in farcical 1931 Alabama trials. The Garland Fund financed campaigns by both sides of the bitter NAACP-Communist Party rivalry, transforming the NAACP-Fund litigation campaign in the process. @simonandschuster.bsky.social
October 1, 2025 at 12:30 PM
Countdown 13, the Scottsboro 9: young Black men convicted of rape in farcical 1931 Alabama trials. The Garland Fund financed campaigns by both sides of the bitter NAACP-Communist Party rivalry, transforming the NAACP-Fund litigation campaign in the process. @simonandschuster.bsky.social
Character countdown 14, Joseph Schlossberg: Cloakmaker, immigrant, and Yiddish-language editor of socialist and labor publications, longtime treasurer at the Amalgamated Clothing Workers union. Member of Sidney Hillman's Garland Fund-connected world. @SimonandSchuster.bsky.social
September 30, 2025 at 12:45 PM
Character countdown 14, Joseph Schlossberg: Cloakmaker, immigrant, and Yiddish-language editor of socialist and labor publications, longtime treasurer at the Amalgamated Clothing Workers union. Member of Sidney Hillman's Garland Fund-connected world. @SimonandSchuster.bsky.social
Countdown 15, David Saposs: Labor economist in Sidney Hillman’s braintrust at the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, chief economist at the NLRB, and technocrat of the modern industrial union. @SimonandSchuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund
September 29, 2025 at 12:15 PM
Countdown 15, David Saposs: Labor economist in Sidney Hillman’s braintrust at the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, chief economist at the NLRB, and technocrat of the modern industrial union. @SimonandSchuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund
Countdown 16, Nicola Sacco & Bartolomeo Vanzetti: Italian immigrant anarchists made famous by trial on charges of murder at a Boston-area factory. Garland Fund support for an international defense campaign drew attention to the case until their 1927 executions. @SimonBooks
September 28, 2025 at 2:14 PM
Countdown 16, Nicola Sacco & Bartolomeo Vanzetti: Italian immigrant anarchists made famous by trial on charges of murder at a Boston-area factory. Garland Fund support for an international defense campaign drew attention to the case until their 1927 executions. @SimonBooks