Reed Harris

Who was Reed Harris?

Reed Harris was an American writer, publisher, and U.S. government official.

Harris was born on November 5, 1909, in New York City. He attended Staunton Military Academy and in 1932 graduated from Columbia College, where he edited the school newspaper, the Columbia Spectator. His college classmates voted him "most likely to succeed." He was a member of the Student League for Industrial Democracy.

In the fall of 1931, he characterized the college football program as a "semiprofessional racket." He was expelled in April 1932, but following student protests he was readmitted twenty days later. In the fall of 1932, he published King Football: The Vulgarization of the American College, an exposé of commercialism in college football and an attack on higher education that accused United States schools of turning out "regimented lead soldiers of mediocrity." "To put forth winning football teams," he wrote, "alumni, faculty and trustees will lie, cheat and steal, unofficially." He called the players "privileged mugs," said the faculty had a "percentage of utter numbskulls," attacked Columbia President Nicholas Murray Butler, and praised college newspaper editors and Soviet Russia. The book included a defense of academic freedom that included the right of communists to teach.