 "New Masses" was identified by one scholar as the "semi-official spokesman of Communist letters" He was also Executive Vice-President of the Council for Pan American Democracy, which John Dewey's Committee for Cultural Freedom alleged in 1940 was under "outright communist control" and Provisional secretary of the Board of Directors for the Jefferson School of Social Science, associated with the Communist Party.He wrote a memo cautioning Owen Lattimore, editor of the IPR quarterly "Pacific Affairs", with regard to a certain article that "the analysis is a straight Marxist one and... should not be altered.