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Hamilton Fish V (born September 5, 1951), also known as "Ham", is a U.S. publisher, social entrepreneur, environmental advocate, and film producer in New York City. He is currently the publisher and editor of the monthly independent political periodical The Washington Spectator .
Fish was born in Washington, D.C., to Julia (MacKenzie) and Hamilton Fish IV, a Republican politician and member of the influential Fish family. He attended schools in New York City and Massachusetts, where he graduated from Harvard University in 1973.
While at Harvard College in 1971, Fish co-founded the National Movement for the Student Vote with Morris Abram Jr. Conceived in response to the passage of the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution granting eighteen year-olds the right to vote, the organization assisted college-age voters whose efforts to register to vote on or near their campuses were resisted by local authorities. [1]
Following graduation, Fish worked as chief fundraiser for the Ramsey Clark for Senate campaign in New York. Ramsey Clark, a Democrat and former Attorney General of the United States in the Johnson Administration, ran as an anti-war candidate and reinforced his opposition to the influence of money in electoral politics by imposing a per person limit of $100 on contributions to his campaign. [2] Victor Navasky, with whom Fish later joined forces at The Nation , was Clark's campaign manager, and Mark Green, whose many subsequent campaigns Fish worked on, was director of policy and issues research.
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. During their stewardship, The Nation experienced steady growth, modernized its publishing operation, prospered in many respects during the Ronald Reagan years, and caused a measure of mayhem worthy of an independent political journal. The magazine waged an honorable if lonely battle over the history of the Cold War, lost a landmark lawsuit [3] over the protection of copyright in the Supreme Court of the United States, and convened large scale conferences including the 1981 Writers' Congress, which examined the status of writers and their representation (and spawned the National Writers Union); as well as the Dialogo de Todas Las Americas, [4] to establish a cultural and political discourse between north and south as a counter to the interventionist doctrine of the Reagan years. In 1987, Fish transferred his interest in the magazine to Arthur Carter, a New York investor who had started the Litchfield County Times and who succeeded Fish as The Nation's publisher.
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. He also created the Alfred Knobler Fellowships, named for a benefactor and longtime friend of The Nation, specifically to support journalists of color. Recipients have included Pamela Newkirk, New York University Journalism Professor and author; Gary Younge, the US-based columnist for The Guardian and The Nation; and Ta-Nehisi Coates, author, blogger, and senior editor for The Atlantic . With the help of the Lear Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and the Puffin Foundation, Fish created an investigative journalism division, directed by Esther Kaplan and Joe Conason, to fund and oversee long-form investigative projects; with Tom Engelhardt he developed tomdispatch.com , an important source of progressive commentary on the web; with Randy Fertel he developed the Ridenhour Prizes, which annually recognize whistleblowers, investigative reporters, and others who persevere in courageous acts of truth-telling; and with Victor Navasky he helped found Nation Books, which under Editor Carl Bromley and in association first with Avalon and then Perseus Books, grew into a leading independent non-fiction imprint. During these years, Fish also worked as a political advisor to George Soros, and with Jeffrey Kusama-Hinte he helped to develop a lobbying effort on behalf of U.S. support for the International Criminal Court, an initiative which President Bill Clinton endorsed on the last day of December, 2000. In 2009 and 2010, Fish assisted Lewis H. Lapham with development of the literary magazine Lapham's Quarterly .
At the invitation of The Nation's editor Katrina vanden Heuvel, Fish worked on the design and implementation of the year-long celebration of The Nation's 150th anniversary in 2015. Fish currently manages a strategic consulting practice for clients engaged in socially active businesses, including the Baffler Magazine and Audience Engine, the new open source platform that offers audience development and fundraising tools to independent and public media organizations.
After leaving The Nation magazine in 1987, Fish entered a three-way race for the Democratic nomination for the United States Congress in a Westchester County district held by Republican Representative Joseph DioGuardi. The national media took note of the race when his 100-year-old grandfather, Hamilton Fish III, described his grandson as a "communist" and contributed $100 to the Republican in the race. The elder Fish (1888–1991), himself a staunch Republican, served in Congress from the Hudson Valley from 1920–1945. Famously memorialized in Franklin D. Roosevelt's enduring refrain, "Martin, Barton, and Fish", [5] a phrase used by FDR to deride his most persistent adversaries, the elder Fish was still active in conservative circles well into his late nineties. In 1988, the younger Fish lost in the closely contested primary to Nita Lowey, who went on to defeat the incumbent.
In 1994, his father, Hamilton Fish IV, announced his retirement from the United States Congress for health reasons. Fish again entered into a Democratic congressional primary, in the largely Republican mid-Hudson Valley district that his father had represented for 26 years. Fish won the Democratic primary, and although his father crossed party lines to endorse his son, he lost in the general election to Republican Sue Kelly.
In February 2016, Fish was appointed publisher and editorial director of The New Republic after the magazine was purchased by Win McCormack.
On October 29, 2017, Fish began a leave of absence pending an independent investigation into complaints by female employees, according to a letter from McCormack sent to the magazine's staff. McCormack said he had asked Fish to "remain on a leave of absence," effective immediately. "I have been made aware that a number of employees have come forward in the last few days to express concern about certain workplace interactions that have created an uncomfortable environment for them," McCormack wrote. "As I understand them, these concerns relate specifically to interactions between Ham Fish and a number of women employees." On October 30, 2017, the Huffington Post published allegations that, in front of several witnesses, Fish had choked a senior staff member at The Nation Institute hard enough to leave red marks on her throat. [6] On November 3, 2017, he resigned from his positions. [7] [8]
In a New York Times article from November 3, 2017, Fish was cited as writing in response, "As I understand it, some employees, to my deep dismay, complained this week that my presence had led them to feel uncomfortable at The New Republic.” The article notes he added later, “It’s my sense that our office culture has been harmed, and the best way for me to help the organization move past this is by withdrawing." In the letter Fish also stated, "Women have longstanding and profound concerns with respect to their treatment in the workplace. Many men have a lot to learn in this regard. I know I do.” [9]
In 1975 Fish established a partnership with Marcel Ophuls, who had gained worldwide acclaim for The Sorrow and the Pity , his 1969 documentary on resistance and collaboration in Vichy France. Ophüls had been forcibly separated from his then current project, a film on the legacy of Nuremberg and its application to the American intervention in Vietnam. With the backing of California financier Max Palevsky and the support of Paramount Pictures, Fish embarked on a two-year odyssey to complete The Memory of Justice and to arrange its distribution. The four-hour-and-forty-minute film premiered at Cannes Film Festival in 1976, [10] and appeared in the United States for the first time at the New York Film Festival later that same year. Writing in the New York Times , Vincent Canby declared that the film had set a new standard for documentaries, stating "...The Memory of Justice expands the possibilities of the documentary motion picture in such a way that all future films of this sort will be compared to it." [11]
In 2011, Fish allied with the Film Foundation, the film restoration project headed by Martin Scorsese, to revive Ophuls’ long-dormant masterpiece. The Film Foundation oversaw the reconstruction and digitization of the film and presented the premiere of the finished work at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2015. Fish and Ophuls, now 87, traveled to Berlin for the premiere, and Ophuls received the Festival's prestigious Berlinale Camera award. The Film Foundation has shepherded the restored documentary to festivals and screenings around the world, including a return visit to the 2015 New York Film Festival 39 years after the film's debut at the Lincoln Center venue.
In the 1980s, Fish renewed his association with Ophüls, and together with his producing partner, John Friedman, they commenced production of the third film in the Ophüls trilogy on the evolving legacy of the Holocaust. [12] Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie would take several years to finish, as the filmmakers followed the trail of SS officer Klaus Barbie from his home in Bolivia to Lyons, France, where he was tried for crimes against humanity. The film was distributed domestically in 1988 by Samuel Goldwyn Films, and by Orion worldwide. Hotel Terminus received the 1989 Academy Award for Feature Documentary. [13]
With John Friedman and Eric Nadler, Fish produced Stealing the Fire, [14] the 2002 documentary that traced the development of uranium atom separation from the failed experiments in the World War II labs of Nazi Germany through the successful invention of the centrifuge in the Black Sea labs of the former Soviet Union, to the eventual patent infringement of the separation technology and its transfer to Pakistani and Iraqi agents. Stealing the Fire was distributed nationally in theaters by Avatar and broadcast on the Sundance Channel.
Fish served as a producer of Food Chains , the 2014 documentary by Sanjay Rawal about farm labor that focused in particular on the gains achieved by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the worker-based human rights organization representing tomato pickers in Florida. Food Chains helped spark a nationwide resurgence of advocacy around the workplace conditions and low wages of farm workers. Fish also developed the documentary Hot Type, for which he served as executive producer. Directed by two-time Academy Award winner Barbara Kopple, and released in 2015 in conjunction with the 150th anniversary of The Nation magazine, Hot Type goes behind the scenes at The Nation and examines the essential character of the independent journal.
In 1989, Fish moved with his partner Sandra Harper to Hudson, New York, and started an organic truck farm, where they grew heirloom produce and culinary and decorative herbs. They sold these items at the Union Square Greenmarket and to restaurants and farm stands in Upstate New York. Fish also commuted several days a week to New York City where he worked at Human Rights Watch, under then-Executive Director Aryeh Neier. During this period, Fish was most prominently associated with the launch of the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival and the opening of HRW's European office in Brussels, Belgium. Their first child, Eliza, was born in 1991. In 1992, they moved to Garrison, New York, where Sophia, their second child, was born in 1993. Fish eventually moved his family to Lower Manhattan in 1997, where he entered his daughters in the local elementary school. The 2001 attack on the World Trade Center forced Fish to move his family out of the city temporarily and back up the Hudson River to Garrison.
In 2005, Fish and his wife Sandra, who was raised in Houston, acquired an adobe home in Marfa, Texas. Harper developed another garden at this new location and went on to create Farm Stand Marfa, a regional farmers' market serving the towns and communities situated on the Marfa plateau. Fish partnered with Ballroom Marfa, a regional center for contemporary art and culture, to create the Marfa Dialogues, a cross-disciplinary program of politics, culture, and the arts, with programs in Marfa, New York City, St. Louis and Houston.
Fish serves as president of the Alice Curtis Desmond and Hamilton Fish Library [15] in Garrison, New York, and is on the board of the Fund for Constitutional Government, which develops and sustains organizations that protect and reinforce basic constitutional principles. Fish also serves as chair of the Board of Visitors of the School of Global Journalism and Communications at Morgan State University.
Marfa is a city in the high desert of the Trans-Pecos in far West Texas, between the Davis Mountains and Big Bend National Park. It is the county seat of Presidio County, and its population as of the 2010 United States Census was 1,981. The city was founded in the early 1880s as a water stop; the population peaked in the 1930s and has continued to decline each decade since. Today, Marfa is a tourist destination and a major center for minimalist art. Attractions include Building 98, the Chinati Foundation, artisan shops, historical architecture, a classic Texas town square, modern art installments, art galleries, and the Marfa lights.
Hamilton Fish III was an American soldier and politician from New York State. Born into a family long active in the state, he served in the United States House of Representatives from 1920 to 1945 and during that time was a prominent opponent of United States intervention in foreign affairs and was a critic of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. When Fish celebrated his 102nd birthday in 1990, he was the oldest living American who had served in Congress. During his tenure in Congress, accusations of collusion with Nazis came to light. These accusations were later confirmed by the discovery of Nazi documents seized after the end of World War II. Later, his ties to George Sylvester Viereck, a top Nazi spy working in the US to spread pro-Hitler and anti-Semitic propaganda, were confirmed by the discovery of correspondence between Viereck and US Senator Ernest Lundeen.
Marcel Ophuls is a German-French documentary film maker and former actor, best known for his films The Sorrow and the Pity and Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie.
The Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) is a biannual magazine for professional journalists that has been published by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism since 1961. Its original purpose was "to assess the performance of journalism in all its forms, to call attention to its shortcomings and strengths, and to help define--or redefine--standards of honest, responsible service." Its contents include news and media industry trends, analysis, professional ethics, and stories behind news.
Victor Saul Navasky was an American journalist, editor, and academic. He was publisher emeritus of The Nation and George T. Delacorte Professor Emeritus of Professional Practice in Magazine Journalism at Columbia University. He was editor of The Nation from 1978 until 1995 and its publisher and editorial director from 1995 to 2005. Navasky's book Naming Names (1980) is considered a definitive take on the Hollywood blacklist. For it he won a 1982 National Book Award for Nonfiction.
Edward Sorel is an American illustrator, caricaturist, cartoonist, graphic designer and author. His work is known for its storytelling, its left-liberal social commentary, its criticism of reactionary right-wing politics and organized religion. Formerly a regular contributor to The Nation, New York Magazine and The Atlantic, his work is today seen more frequently in Vanity Fair. He has been hailed by The New York Times as "one of America's foremost political satirists". As a lifelong New Yorker, a large portion of his work interprets the life, culture and political events of New York City. There is also a large body of work which is nostalgic for the stars of 1930s and 1940s Hollywood when Sorel was a youth. Sorel is noted for his wavy pen-and-ink style, which he describes as "spontaneous direct drawing".
The Sorrow and the Pity is a two-part 1969 documentary film by Marcel Ophuls about the collaboration between the Vichy government and Nazi Germany during World War II. The film uses interviews with a German officer, collaborators, and resistance fighters from Clermont-Ferrand. They comment on the nature of and reasons for collaboration, including antisemitism, Anglophobia, fear of Bolsheviks and Soviet invasion, and the desire for power.
The Memory of Justice is a 1976 documentary film directed by Marcel Ophuls. It explores the subject of atrocities committed in wartime and features Joan Baez, Karl Dönitz, Hermann Göring, Hans-Joachim Kulenkampff, Yehudi Menuhin, Albert Speer and Telford Taylor.
Bartle Breese Bull or Bartle Bull III is an American businessman and writer. Bull is a former editor of the Middle East Monitor and foreign editor of Prospect, a leading London-based political and cultural magazine.
Win McCormack is an American publisher and editor from Oregon.
Stefan Forbes is an American screenwriter and film director whose films and social justice work often address issues of race, class, masculinity, violence, and restorative justice.
Brave New Films (BNF) is a nonprofit film company based in Culver City, California. Founded by filmmaker Robert Greenwald, BNF produces feature-length documentaries and investigative videos that seek "to educate, influence and empower viewers to take action around issues that matter."
Nelson Antonio Denis is an American attorney, author, film director, and former representative to the New York State Assembly. From 1997 through 2000, Denis represented New York's 68th Assembly district, which includes the East Harlem and Spanish Harlem neighborhoods, both highly populated by Latinos.
Steve Benen is an American political writer, blogger, MSNBC contributor and producer of The Rachel Maddow Show, for which he received two Emmy Awards in 2017. His first book, The Impostors: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics, was published by William Morrow and Company in June 2020.
The Nation is a progressive American biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator, an abolitionist newspaper that closed in 1865, after ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Thereafter, the magazine proceeded to a broader topic, The Nation. An important collaborator of the new magazine was its Literary Editor Wendell Phillips Garrison, son of William. He had at his disposal his father's vast network of contacts.
Rachel Mason is an American filmmaker whose work includes performance art, music, films and multimedia projects.
Jeff Kaufman is an American film producer, director, writer, and illustrator. Kaufman has produced, written, and directed documentaries focusing on human rights activism and cultural icons including The State of Marriage, Every Act of Life, and Nasrin.
The "Malibu Mafia" was an informal group of wealthy American Jewish men who donated money to liberal and progressive causes and politicians during 1960s–1990s. Associated with the beach city of Malibu, California, the group included economist Stanley Sheinbaum, Warner Bros. chairman Ted Ashley, television producer Norman Lear, and four businessmen: Harold Willens, Leopold Wyler, Miles L. Rubin and Max Palevsky. Founded in opposition to the Vietnam War, the group often met at Willens' beachfront house on Malibu Colony Road, and also in Sheinbaum's home in Westwood, Los Angeles, where he held a regular political salon with liberal participants, especially from the film and television industries of Greater Los Angeles. The Malibu Mafia were known for funding the failed George McGovern 1972 presidential campaign, the legal defense of Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, the successful 1973 campaign by African-American politician Tom Bradley to become the mayor of Los Angeles, the 1978 salvaging of the progressive magazine The Nation, the Nuclear Freeze campaign of the 1980s, and the Israel–Palestine negotiations that yielded the Oslo Accords in 1993.
Art Bastard is a 2016 documentary film written and directed by Victor Kanefsky. It details the life of Artist Robert Cenedella and explains how specific moments and experiences from childhood to present day influenced his style as a New York Artist. The film was well received by critics and audiences alike, and garnered attention when it became an Official Selection at the Newport Beach Film Festival on April 25, 2016. Shortly thereafter, it was publicly released to select movie theaters across the United States on June 3, 2016, and began receiving critical acclaim in both domestic and international film festivals by winning several awards, including Best Documentary at Idyllwild International Festival of Cinema (2016), the Manchester Film Festival (2016), East Hampton TV Festival at Guild Hall of East Hampton (2019), and at the NYC International Film Festival (2019).
A Sense of Loss is a 1972 documentary film directed and produced by Marcel Ophüls on The Troubles in Northern Ireland.
