¹ Charles Frankel, “Definition of the True Egghead,” New York Times Sunday Magazine, 21 Oct. 1956, 14.

² Charles Price, “I Live among the Eggheads,” Saturday Evening Post, 16 Nov. 1957, 42, 43, 146, 42, original emphasis.

³ The anti-intellectual framework has been most persuasively advanced in Richard Hofstadter's influential work. Richard Hofstadter, Anti-intellectualism in American Life (New York: Knopf, 1963). This essay also builds on an expanding literature on the Cold War that recognizes a fundamental contradiction between purported efforts to resist the totalitarianism represented as dominating culture within the USSR by suppressing dissent and freedom within the United States. See especially Ted Morgan, Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Random House, 2004); Ellen Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (New York: Little, Brown, 1998); Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991). Finally, the scholarly rethinking of American culture in the 1950s as representing something other than a period of stasis – in other words, the increasing historiographic concern with disrupting the myth of a “traditional” culture in the 1950s – has put to rest the notion that Cold War culture constituted a retreat from social change rather than a critical moment in the reshaping of American culture, society, and politics. See especially Martin Halliwell, American Culture in the 1950s (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007); Lary May, ed., Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of the Cold War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); Leerom Medovoi, Rebels: Youth and the Cold War Origins of Identity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005).

⁴ I am using liberalism here to denote a generally agreed-upon definition that emerged following the expansion of federal government in the 1930s: a commitment to capitalism and democracy standing against communism, a recognition that a strong federal government was necessary to safeguard American liberty, and a belief in incremental social change. I am also sensitive, however, to the ways in which historians such as William H. Chafe have argued that “the term liberal has altered over time.” The historiography on conservatism has undergone a similar shift towards acknowledging the historical contingencies of political categories. The tension I am trying to highlight in this essay centers upon a moment marked by struggles over both defining and implementing a “liberal consensus” that sought, again using Chafe's words, “to develop a liberal ideology that incorporates both the rights of individuals and the importance of collective identities on people's lives and fortunes” in the midst of international and national struggles over political, racial, gender, and sexual identities. Though the term liberalism might obscure as much as it reveals, I contend that it is impossible to write about the political world during the Cold War without acknowledging the immense influence of liberalism on the shape of American culture, society, and politics. I also conceive this article as contributing to the ongoing investigations into the origins and meanings of postwar liberalism: I contend that the irresolvable paradoxes of the egghead were instrumental in shaping a version of liberalism that placed a premium on white male privilege and diminished the value of intellectuals in Cold War political culture. William H. Chafe, The Achievement of American Liberalism: The New Deal and Its Legacies (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), xii, xviii. See also Jonathan M. Schoenwald, A Time for Choosing: The Rise of Modern American Conservatism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

⁵ Su Holmes, The Quiz Show (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009).

⁶ Joseph Stone and Tim Yohn, Prime Time and Misdemeanors: Investigating the 1950s TV Quiz Scandal, A D.A.'s Account (Newark, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992).

⁷ Joe Adamson, Tex Avery, King of Cartoons (New York: Da Capo, 1985), 208–9. Though the precise meaning of an egghead would change in the 1950s, it is significant that the implications of failed masculinity appear in this prefiguration.

⁸ Joseph and Stewart Alsop, The Reporter's Trade (New York: Reynal and Company, 1958), 188; Joseph W. Alsop with Adam Platt, “I've Seen the Best of It”: Memoirs (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992), 341; Robert W. Merry, Taking on the World: Joseph and Stewart Alsop – Guardians of the American Century (New York: Viking, 1996), 236.

⁹ Harrison Smith, “The Egghead Problem,” Saturday Review, 21 Feb. 1953, 24.

¹⁰ Arthur Krock, “Ideas Live, Men Die,” New York Times Book Review, 2 Oct. 1955, 6.

¹¹ Smith, 24.

¹² This historical argument dovetails with Bledstein's history of professionalism that would appear later. Burton J. Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America (New York: Norton, 1976).

¹³ “Eggheads: Cracking the Enigma,” Newsweek, 53–57, 57.

¹⁴ Though the egghead was supposed to be a negative force in society, then, he was also a signifier of America's educational achievement. On the roots and rise of American nationalism in the 1950s, see especially Richard M. Fried, The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! Pageantry and Patriotism in Cold-War America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); William L. O'Neill, American High: The Years of Confidence, 1945–1960 (New York: Free Press, 1986). See also John Fousek, To Lead the Free World: American Nationalism & The Cultural Roots of the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); Matthew S. Hirshberg, Perpetuating Patriotic Perceptions: The Cognitive Function of the Cold War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993).

¹⁵ “Eggheads: Cracking the Enigma,” 53.

¹⁶ Ibid., 55.

¹⁷ I have also noted, however, that the term “anti-intellectualism” is somewhat redundant since the term “intellectuals” implies a special class of citizens. Though it is possible to conceive certain moments in American history as particularly “anti-intellectual,” the real fluctuations relate to a paradox relationship with intelligence rather than with the establishment of a particular class of people. In other words, to talk about intellectuals is already to shift the conversation away from intelligence itself.

¹⁸ Clark, Daniel A., “‘The Two Joes Meet. Joe College, Joe Veteran.’: The G.I. Bill, College Education, and Postwar American Culture,” History of Education Quarterly, 38, 2 (Summer 1998), 165–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Olson, Keith, “The G.I. Bill and Higher Education: Success and Surprise,” American Quarterly, 25, 5 (Dec. 1973), 596–610.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On African Americans and higher education see Herbold, Hilary, “Never a Level Playing Field: Blacks and the G.I. Bill,” Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, 6 (Winter 1994), 104–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁹ On representations of education under the G.I. Bill see Loss, Christopher P., “‘The Most Wonderful Thing Has Happened to Me in the Army’: Psychology, Citizenship, and American Higher Education in World War II,” Journal of American History, 92, 3 (Fall 2006), 864–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁰ Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion: An American History (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 167. Kazin believes that this rhetoric died out by the end of the 1950s; my argument suggests that there was more continuity throughout the decade (and beyond) than Kazin allows.

²¹ Michael Novak, “The Brain Curtain,” The Nation, 10 Dec. 1960, 454.

²² Jerison, Harry J., “Brain to Body Ratios and the Evolution of Intelligence,” Science, 1 April 1955, 449Google ScholarPubMed.

²³ Jerison, 447–49.

²⁴ On baldness as cultural signifier of impotence see Adams, Parveen, “The Bald Truth,” diacritics, 24, 2–3 (Summer 1994), 184–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁵ Alvin O. Collins, letter, Newsweek, 5 Nov. 1956, 6.

²⁶ Lee Graham, “10 Secrets of Sex Appeal,” Coronet, March 1954, 35.

²⁷ Advertisement for Bonwit's 721 Club, New York Times, 17 Dec. 1957, 36.

²⁸ Though he was often Jewish, it should be noted that Jewish identity by the 1950s was less commonly considered a racial classification. Additionally, the assimilability of intelligence into whiteness provided a site where minoritized groups could claim the benefits of whiteness itself. See Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (New York: Verso, 1991).

²⁹ M. B. Tolson, Harlem Gallery: Book I, The Curator (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1965).

³⁰ Tolson, 139.

³¹ Levine, Andrea, “The (Jewish) White Negro: Norman Mailer's Racial Bodies,” MELUS, 28 (Summer 2003), 59–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 59.

³² Norman Mailer, Advertisements for Myself (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1959), 341.

³³ W.T. Lhamon, Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990), 67.

³⁴ Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (New York: Random House, 1952); Jack Kerouac, On the Road (New York: Signet, 1957).

³⁵ George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998).

³⁶ Joseph A. Keough, letter, Newsweek, 5 Nov. 1956, 6.

³⁷ Gavin Butt, Between You and Me: Queer Disclosures in the New York Art World, 1948–1963 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005); Patrick Higgins, A Queer Reader: 2500 Years of Homosexuality (New York: New Press, 1993), 287.

³⁸ Frank Fenton, “The Chicken or the Egghead,” in Raymond J. Healy, ed., 9 Tales of Space and Time (New York: Henry Holt, 1954), 220, 216.

³⁹ Bromfield, Louis, “The Triumph of the Egghead,” The Freeman, 1 Dec. 1952, 158Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Bromfield, 159.

⁴¹ Jonathan Dollimore, “Post/Modern: On the Gay Sensibility, or the Pervert's Revenge on Autheniticity,” in Fabio Cleto, ed., Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1999), 221–36.

⁴² Percy W. Brown, letter to the editor, Saturday Review, 28 March 1953, 24.

⁴³ David K. Johnson, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 121.

⁴⁴ Ibid., 121.

⁴⁵ Jorgensen was an ex-GI who had the first publicly acknowledged male-to-female surgical sex change in the United States. Ibid., 122.

⁴⁶ Advertisement for Donmoor Knit Shirts, New York Times Sunday Magazine, 8 April 1956, 112.

⁴⁷ Jill Corey with Jimmy Carroll and his Orchestra, “Egghead,” by Hoffman, Manning, and Story (Columbia, 1956).

⁴⁸ George Strong, letter, New York Times Sunday Magazine, 4 May 1958, 17.

⁴⁹ On the demand for conformity and patriotism in the 1950s see David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950).

⁵⁰ Cogley, John, “Eggheads, Soft-Boiled,” The Commonweal, 28 Nov. 1952, 190Google Scholar.

⁵¹ “Martin Condemns Talk of a Slump,” New York Times, 24 Jan. 1954, 51.

⁵² See David M. Oshinsky, A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy (New York: The Free Press, 1983); Thomas C. Reeves, The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy, A Biography (New York: Stein and Day, 1982).

⁵³ Lawrence, W. H., “McCarthy Defends His Methods and Defies Critics ‘High or Low,’” New York Times, 18 March 1954, 1Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ Susan Faulkner, letter, New York Times, 13 Nov. 1954, 14.