Editing John Dewey (section)

==Social and political activism==
===1894 Pullman Strike===
While Dewey was at the [[University of Chicago]], his letters to his wife Alice and his colleague [[Jane Addams]] reveal that he closely followed the 1894 [[Pullman Strike]], in which the employees of the Pullman Palace Car Factory in Chicago decided to go on strike after industrialist [[George Pullman]] refused to lower rents in his company town after cutting his workers' wages by nearly 30 percent. On May 11, 1894, the strike became official, later gaining the support of the members of the [[American Railway Union]], whose leader [[Eugene V. Debs]] called for a nationwide boycott of all trains including Pullman sleeping cars.<ref name="Louis Menand 2001">Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club, (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001), 285–333.</ref>

Considering most trains had Pullman cars, the main 24 lines out of Chicago were halted and the mail was stopped as the workers destroyed trains all over the United States. President [[Grover Cleveland]] used the mail as a justification to send in the National Guard, and ARU leader Eugene Debs was arrested.<ref name="Louis Menand 2001"/>

Dewey wrote to Alice: "The only wonder is that when the 'higher classes' – damn them – take such views there aren't more downright socialists. [...] [T]hat a representative journal of the upper classes – damn them again – can take the attitude of that harper's weekly", referring to headlines such as "Monopoly" and "Repress the Rebellion", which claimed, in Dewey's words, to support the sensational belief that Debs was a "criminal" inspiring hate and violence in the equally "criminal" working classes. He concluded: "It shows what it is to be a higher class. And I fear Chicago Univ. is a capitalistic institution – that is, it too belongs to the higher classes."<ref name="Louis Menand 2001"/>

===Pro-war stance in First World War===
Dewey was an advocate of US participation in the [[First World War]]. For this he was criticised by [[Randolph Bourne]], a former student whose essay "[[Twilight of Idols (essay)|Twilight of Idols]]", was published in the literary journal ''[[Seven Arts (literary journal)|Seven Arts]]'' in October 1917. Bourne criticised Dewey's [[instrumentalism|instrumental]] [[pragmatism|pragmatist]] philosophy.<ref name="Cywar">{{cite journal |last1=Cywar |first1=Alan |title=John Dewey in World War I: Patriotism and International Progressivism |journal=American Quarterly |date=1969 |volume=21 |issue=3 |pages=578–594 |doi=10.2307/2711935 |jstor=2711935 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2711935 |issn=0003-0678}}</ref>

===International League for Academic Freedom===
[[File:John Dewey Grave.JPG|thumb|upright|The grave of Dewey and his wife in an alcove on the north side of the [[Ira Allen Chapel]] in [[Burlington, Vermont]]. It is the only grave on the [[University of Vermont]] campus.]]
As a major advocate of academic freedom, in 1935 Dewey, together with [[Albert Einstein]] and [[Alvin Saunders Johnson|Alvin Johnson]], became a member of the United States section of the International League for Academic Freedom,<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/public3_text.htm |title=American Institute of Physics |access-date=2008-08-27 |archive-date=2007-08-06 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070806190724/http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/public3_text.htm  }}</ref> and in 1940, together with [[Horace Kallen]], edited a series of articles related to the [[The Bertrand Russell Case|Bertrand Russell Case]].

===Dewey Commission===
He directed the famous [[Dewey Commission]] held in Mexico in 1937, which cleared [[Leon Trotsky]] of the charges made against him by [[Joseph Stalin]],<ref name="Dewey Commission Report">{{Cite web |url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/dewey/index.htm |title="Dewey Commission Report" |access-date=December 22, 2008 |archive-date=January 25, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210125141408/http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/dewey/index.htm |url-status=live }}</ref> and marched for [[women's rights]], among many other causes.

===League for Industrial Democracy===
In 1939, Dewey was elected President of the [[League for Industrial Democracy]], an organization with the goal of educating college students about the labor movement. The Student Branch of the L.I.D. later became the [[Students for a Democratic Society]].<ref>''The Cambridge Companion to Dewey'', edited by Molly Cochran. Cambridge University Press, 2010. p. xvii.</ref>

As well as defending the independence of teachers and opposing a communist takeover of the New York Teachers' Union,<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8FSksfVY-nMC&q=john%20dewey%20communist%20teachers%20union&pg=PA398|title=John Dewey: Political theory and social practice|isbn=978-0-415-05313-6|last1=Tiles|first1=J.E.|year=1992|publisher=Taylor & Francis }}</ref> Dewey was involved in the organization that eventually became the [[National Association for the Advancement of Colored People]], sitting as an executive on the NAACP's early executive board.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.naacp.org/nations-premier-civil-rights-organization/|title=About &#124; NAACP|access-date=July 22, 2019|archive-date=August 1, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190801144155/http://www.naacp.org/nations-premier-civil-rights-organization/|url-status=live}}</ref>
He was an avid supporter of [[Henry George]]'s proposal for taxing land values. Of George, he wrote, "No man, no graduate of a higher educational institution, has a right to regard himself as an educated man in social thought unless he has some first-hand acquaintance with the theoretical contribution of this great American thinker."<ref>Dewey, J. (1927) [http://www.wealthandwant.com/HG/PP/Dewey_Appreciation_HG.html An Appreciation of Henry George] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140625102310/http://www.wealthandwant.com/HG/PP/Dewey_Appreciation_HG.html |date=June 25, 2014 }}</ref> As honorary president of the Henry George School of Social Science, he wrote a letter to [[Henry Ford]] urging him to support the school.<ref>Dewey, J. (1939) [http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/dewey-john_a-letter-to-henry-ford-1939.html A Letter to Henry Ford] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150113025951/http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/dewey-john_a-letter-to-henry-ford-1939.html |date=2015-01-13 }}</ref>