Friendly Fascism!

Bertram Myron Gross (1912 in Philadelphia - March 12, 1997 in Walnut Creek, California) was an American social scientist, Federal bureaucrat and Professor of Political Science at Hunter College (CUNY). He is known from his book 'Friendly Fascism' from 1980 and as primary author of the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act. Gross was born in Philadelphia. He received his B.A. in English and Philosophy, and his M.A. in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania. In the late 1940s, he started as a federal bureaucrat in Washington. From 1941 to 1945 he was a staff member of a number of Senate committees. Here he wrote the Roosevelt-Truman full employment bills of 1944 and 1945, which led to the Employment Act of 1946. From 1946 to 1952 he was executive secretary of the President's Council of Economic Advisers. In the 1950s, he moved with his family to Israel, where he served as an economic advisor in the Prime Minister's Office and as a Visiting Professor at the Hebrew University, where he established their program in Public Administration. He returned to the United States in the 1960s and joined the faculty of Syracuse University in the Maxwell School. In 1961-62, he was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Palo Alto; and, in 1962-63, he was the Leatherbee Lecturer at the Harvard Business School. In 1970, Bertram Gross was president of the Society for General Systems Research. From 1970 to 1982 he was Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Urban Affairs at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center.