If you’ve thought of Albert Einstein as he’s so often pictured by news media— as that famously tousle-haired, remote genius off in his own abstr

The political Einstein

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2024-11-16 02:00:03

If you’ve thought of Albert Einstein as he’s so often pictured by news media— as that famously tousle-haired, remote genius off in his own abstract world— then Einstein on Politics offers some surprises. A 1946 Time cover image set E = mc2 in a mushroom cloud behind “Cosmoclast Einstein,” who stares blankly at the reader. When Time proclaimed Einstein its “Person of the Century” in 2000, it bolstered his stereotype as “the embodiment of pure intellect, the bumbling professor with the German accent, a comic cliché in a thousand films.” True, the newsmag did credit Einstein for having “denounced McCarthyism and pleaded for an end to bigotry and racism,” yet still dismissed him as politically “well-meaning if naïve,” an opinion shared widely today.

Einstein’s scientific genius actually made it hard for us to learn his political views. Intimidated by his brilliant insights into things beyond our ken, we hesitated to seek his political counsel. And Einstein knew his own limitations, admitting in 1930 that,“My passionate interest in social justice and social responsibility has always stood in curious contrast to a marked lack of desire for direct association with men and women.”