Hamilton Fish is lefty royalty. And not just because of his name. Though the Fish family is a kind of political royalty. Hamilton is the descendant of about 5 or 6 other men named Hamilton Fish dating back all the way to the Civil War. And that makes him almost a cartoon of one of type of leftist that inhabits the movement.
But Hamilton Fish is lefty royalty because of his role on The Nation.
Fish is perhaps best known for his work revitalizing The Nation magazine, and its sister foundation, the Nation Institute. In 1977, Fish teamed up with Victor Navasky and began the work of recruiting investors to acquire the magazine, then in receivership. Together with the help of a group of limited partners that included E.L. Doctorow, Norman Lear, Alan Sagner, and Dorothy Schiff, Fish and Navasky began a decade-long partnership as Publisher and Editor of the country's oldest political weekly
From 1995 to 2009 Fish served as president of The Nation Institute, the foundation associated with The Nation magazine. With support from donors including the Lannan Foundation and Paul Newman, he developed a journalism fellowship program to provide support for progressive writers, a roster that would eventually include Eric Alterman, Max Blumenthal, Tom Engelhardt, Chris Hedges, Scott Horton, Naomi Klein, Katha Pollitt, Jeremy Scahill, and Jonathan Schell.
Essentially, Fish made America much worse. And now he's in trouble.
Hamilton Fish has resigned as president and publisher of The New Republic magazine, amid allegations of harassment and inappropriate behavior with women who reported to them. The magazine’s owner, Win McCormack, broke the news Friday in a memo to staffers
As usual... everyone knew.
The warnings came soon after Hamilton Fish was appointed publisher of The New Republic last year. Over email, over the phone, over coffee and drinks, people who had worked with Fish in the past, mostly women, slipped word to the female staffers of the liberal magazine that their incoming boss was trouble.
They told the women that he had grabbed the neck of a high-ranking female employee at The Nation Institute nearly 10 years ago, back when he was president of the nonprofit media organization. They told the women he could be demeaning, even creepy. It was the least they could do. The Nation Institute had parted ways with Fish — about two years after the neck-grabbing incident — but he left under cover of a sprawling non-disparagement provision. Nation Institute vets could warn his future charges only in secret.
The first public suggestion of Fish’s alleged mistreatment of women came on Sunday, when the owner of The New Republic told staffers that it was launching an “immediate, independent investigation” into allegations surrounding Fish and his behavior toward female employees. Fish was taking a leave of absence from the magazine pending the investigation’s outcome, New Republic owner Win McCormack wrote in a memo to the staff.
For many people who have worked under Fish, the reckoning was long overdue. At The Nation Institute, he was a well-connected fundraiser with impressive credentials. He had produced critically acclaimed documentaries and, as an owner in the late 1970s, helped revitalize The Nation magazine. His fate was thought to be bound up with that of the donor-dependent nonprofit he was leading. Speaking out against him, employees felt, might mean destabilizing The Nation Institute.
Better to let women be abused than destabilize the racist sugar daddies of the likes of Max Blumenthal.