and active group of trustees who have no standing in the world of education, who are reactionary and visionless in politics, narrow and medieval in religion. I am convinced that while I remain in the pay of the Trustees of Columbia University I cannot do effectively my part in sustaining public opinion in support of the just war on the German Empire." After a series of faculty departures from Columbia in disputes about academic freedom, his friend James Harvey Robinson also resigned from Columbia in May 1919 to become one of the founders of the New School for Social Research and serve as its first director. Independent scholar Following his departure from Columbia University, Beard never again sought a permanent academic appointment. His financial independence was secured by lucrative royalties he had received from his textbooks and other bestsellers, including The Rise of American Civilization (1927), and its two sequels, America in Midpassage (1939), and The American Spirit (1943). The pair also operated a dairy farm in rural Connecticut that attracted many academic visitors. Beard was active in helping to found the New School for Social Research in the Greenwich Village district of Manhattan, where the faculty would control its own membership. Enlarging upon his interest in urban affairs, he toured Japan and produced a volume of recommendations for the reconstruction of Tokyo after the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake. Beard had parallel careers as an historian and political scientist. He was active in the American Political Science Association and was elected as its president in 1926. He was also a member of the American Historical Association and served as its president in 1933. In political science, he was best known for his textbooks, his studies of the Constitution, his creation of bureaus of municipal research, and his studies of public administration in cities. Beard also taught history at the Brookwood Labor College. Beard was a leading liberal supporter of the New Deal and an intellectual leader in the Progressive movement. However, Beard was very critical of the majoritarian vision of democracy that most Progressive leaders endorsed. In fact, "Beard refrained from endorsing direct democracy measures as a blueprint for reform, focusing instead on streamlining the American system of government to incorporate in a transparent fashion, both political parties and interest groups." World War II Beard opposed President Franklin Roosevelt's foreign policy. Consistent with Beard's Quaker roots, he became one of