A co-founder of The Public Interest has died. Daniel Bell was 91.
At City College, he had no trouble finding his way to Alcove No. 1 in the cafeteria, where, among the anti-Stalinist socialists who dominated that nook, he found a remarkable cohort that challenged and sustained him for much of his life as it helped to define America’s political spectrum over the last half of the 20th century.
Its principal members, in addition to Mr. Bell, included Mr. [Irving] Kristol, whose eventual move to the right as a founding neoconservative led Mr. Bell to leave The Public Interest in 1972 while steadfastly affirming his friendship for his old school chum.
Oddly, Bell is predeceased by his NYT obituarist. Here’s the bio-line:
Michael T. Kaufman, a reporter at The New York Times, died in 2010. William McDonald contributed reporting.