Arthur Hays Sulzberger

Sulzberger was born in New York City, on September 12, 1891.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=O-kpAQAAMAAJ&q=September+12,+1891+sulzberger|title=The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography: Current volume|date=August 7, 1964|publisher=J. T. White|isbn=9780883710418 |via=Google Books}} His parents were Cyrus Leopold Sulzberger, a cotton-goods merchant, and Rachel Peixotto Hays. They came from old Jewish families, Ashkenazi and Sephardic, respectively.{{cite web|url=http://jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=388&letter=H&search=hays|title=HAYS - JewishEncyclopedia.com}} His great-great-grandfather, Benjamin Seixas,{{cite web|url=http://jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=447&letter=S&search=seixas|title=SEIXAS - JewishEncyclopedia.com}} brother of the famous rabbi and American Revolutionary Gershom Mendes Seixas of Congregation Shearith Israel, was one of the founders of the New York Stock Exchange. His great-grandfather, Dr. Daniel Levy Maduro Peixotto,{{cite web|url=http://jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=158&letter=P&search=peixotto|title=PEIXOTTO - JewishEncyclopedia.com}} was a prominent physician and director of Columbia University's Medical College and a member of the Philolexian Society. His great-granduncle was Jacob Hays, the High Constable of New York from 1801 to 1850.{{cite news |author= |title= Mrs. Sulzberger's Final Rites Held |url= https://www.newspapers.com/image/52654258/?terms=%22jacob%2Bhays%22%2Bshearith |work= The Brooklyn Daily Eagle |location= Brooklyn, New York |date= 1938-02-11 |access-date= 2017-07-01}}

In 1909, Sulzberger graduated from Horace Mann School. In 1913, he graduated from Columbia College.

In 1918, Sulzberger began working at The New York Times, and became publisher when his father-in-law, Adolph Ochs, the previous Times publisher, died in 1935. In 1929, he founded Columbia's original Jewish Advisory Board and served on the board of what became Columbia-Barnard Hillel for many years. He served as a university trustee from 1944 to 1959 and is honored with a floor at the journalism school. He also served as a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1939 to 1957.{{Cite web |last=Fosdick |first=Raymond B. |author-link=Raymond B. Fosdick |title=Annual Report 1939 |url=https://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/Annual-Report-1939-1.pdf |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231217223318/https://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/Annual-Report-1939-1.pdf |archive-date=2023-12-17 |access-date=2023-12-17 |website=Rockefeller Foundation}}{{Cite web |last=Rusk |first=Dean |author-link=Dean Rusk |title=Annual Report, 1957 |url=https://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/Annual-Report-1957.pdf |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231217223328/https://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/Annual-Report-1957.pdf |archive-date=2023-12-17 |access-date=2023-12-17 |website=Rockefeller Foundation}} He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1950.{{cite web|title=Book of Members, 1780-2010: Chapter S|url=http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterS.pdf|publisher=American Academy of Arts and Sciences|access-date=April 7, 2011}} In 1954, Sulzberger received The Hundred Year Association of New York's Gold Medal Award "in recognition of outstanding contributions to the City of New York."

Carl Bernstein's 1977 exposé of the media's CIA ties noted that "Sulzberger signed a secrecy agreement with the CIA in the 1950s, according to CIA officials—a fact confirmed by his nephew, C. L. Sulzberger."{{cite magazine|author=Carl Bernstein|title=The CIA and the Media: How America's Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up|url=https://www.carlbernstein.com/the-cia-and-the-media-rolling-stone-10-20-1977|magazine=Rolling Stone|date=1977-10-20|access-date=2024-11-28}}

In 1956, Sulzberger received the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award as well as an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Colby College.

In 1961, he was succeeded as publisher first by son-in-law Orvil Dryfoos, then, two years later in 1963, by his son Arthur Ochs "Punch" Sulzberger.

Sulzberger broadened the Times’ use of background reporting, pictures, and feature articles, and expanded its sections. He supervised the development of facsimile transmission for photographs and built the Times radio station, WQXR, into a leading vehicle for news and music. Under Sulzberger the Times began to publish editions in Paris and Los Angeles with remote-control typesetting machines.

In January 1954, he said, "...I certainly do not advocate that the mind should be so open that the brains fall out".{{cite web|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=av82AAAAIAAJ&q=%22brains%20fall%20out%22|title=Man's right to knowledge and the free use thereof|first=Arthur Hays|last=Sulzberger|date=1 January 1954|publisher=s.n.|via=Google Books}} Sulzberger is also credited with the quote: "We journalists tell the public which way the cat is jumping. The public will take care of the cat."

A practicing Reform Jew, Sulzberger was an enthusiastic supporter of the American Council for Judaism, founded in June 1942 to oppose Zionism, giving it prominent coverage in his newspaper. In a 1946 speech, Sulzberger stated that Zionism was to blame for some of the Jewish deaths in the Holocaust, and that the refugee crisis during the war had been "a manageable, social and economic problem" until "the clamor for statehood introduced an insoluble political element" into the issue. He added it was his judgment that "thousands dead might now be alive" had Zionists put "less emphasis on statehood".{{cite web|url=http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/02/18/new-york-times-column-on-anti-zionism-a-reminder-of-its-own-publisher%E2%80%99s-past/|title=New York Times Column on Anti-Zionism a Reminder of its Own Publisher's Past|website=Algemeiner|date=February 18, 2014|access-date=December 20, 2022}}

His stand against Zionism and a Jewish state of Israel on principle has been accused by Laurel Leff in her 2005 book Buried by the Times of deliberately burying accounts of Nazi atrocities against Jews in the back pages of the Times. She alleges that Sulzberger went out of his way to play down the special victimhood of Jews and withheld support for specific rescue programs for European Jews.{{cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/28/AR2005042801313.html|title=Looking Back in Anger|newspaper=The Washington Post|last=Novick|first=Peter|date=May 1, 2005|access-date=2008-06-26}}

In 1917, he married Iphigene Bertha Ochs, the daughter of Adolph Ochs and Effie Wise (a daughter of Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise). They had four children: Marian Sulzberger Heiskell (1918–2019), widow first of Times publisher Orvil Dryfoos and then of Time Inc. chairman Andrew Heiskell; Ruth Sulzberger Holmberg (1921–2017), publisher of the Chattanooga Times,{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/19/business/media/ruth-sulzberger-holmberg-newspaper-publisher-dies-at-96.html|title=Ruth Sulzberger Holmberg, Newspaper Publisher, Dies at 96|first=Robert D.|last=Mcfadden|work=The New York Times |date=19 April 2017|via=NYTimes.com}} married and divorced from Ben Hale Golden; Judith Sulzberger (1923–2011), physician, married Matthew Rosenschein Jr. (divorced), Dick Cohen (divorced), and Budd Levinson; and Arthur Ochs Sulzberger (1926–2012).[http://nymag.com/news/articles/08/10/20081013_sulzberger.pdf New York Magazine: "Children of the Times - Who's who in the Ochs-Sulzberger clan"] retrieved September 27, 2015

Sulzberger died December 11, 1968, in New York City.{{Cite web|url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Arthur-Hays-Sulzberger|title=Arthur Hays Sulzberger | American newspaper publisher|website=Encyclopedia Britannica|date=30 April 2024 }}

{{reflist}}

• The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind The New York Times, Susan E. Tifft and Alex S. Jones, Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1999.
• The Kingdom and the Power, Gay Talese, New York: Ivy Books, 1992.
• The Story of The New York Times, Meyer Berger, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1951 (Reprinted, 1970).
• Iphigene, I. O. Sulzberger, 1981.

• [https://web.archive.org/web/20050610084603/http://www.naa.org/utilartpage.cfm?TID=NR&AID=6894 NAA]
• [http://c250.columbia.edu/c250_celebrates/remarkable_columbians/arthur_sulzberger.html Biography from Columbia University]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20050326100615/http://www.bartleby.com/65/su/Sulzberg.html Columbia Encyclopedia article]
• [http://archives.nypl.org/mss/17782 Arthur Hays Sulzberger papers], held by the Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Sulzberger, Arthur Hays}}

Category:1891 births

Category:1968 deaths

Category:20th-century American newspaper publishers (people)

Category:American people of German-Jewish descent

Category:American Reform Jews

Category:Businesspeople from New York City

Category:Columbia College (New York) alumni

Category:Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award recipients

Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Category:Horace Mann School alumni

Category:Rockefeller Foundation people

Category:Sulzberger family

Category:The New York Times publishers

Category:Reform anti-Zionists

Category:Jewish American anti-Zionists

Category:Jews from New York (state)