Along with Midge Miller, in 1968, he started the Dump Johnson movement. He lost his seat due to gerrymandering in 1970. In 1971, he became head of the Americans for Democratic Action. That same year, he started the Dump Nixon movement. In 1972, he ran unsuccessfully for Congress in a Brooklyn district.
Lowenstein was well known for his ability to attract energtic young volunteers for his political causes. In the mid-1960s, he briefly served as dean of Stern Hall, then a men's dormitory at Stanford University, during which time he met and befriended undergraduate students David Harris and Dennis Sweeney. Over a decade later in 1980, Lowenstein was shot in New York City by this same Dennis Sweeney, now mentally ill and convinced that Lowenstein was plotting against him. Sweeney subsequently turned himself in to the police. Lowenstein, Sweeney, and the shooting are discussed in the autobiographical book Dreams Die Hard, written in 1982 by Harris, a onetime friend of both men.
Allard K. Lowenstein was one of the most important American political figures of the 1960s and 1970s.
The Allard K. Lowenstein Fund underwritten the transcribing and processing of the interviews, are part of our Collection.
Aside from their detail on the life of Lowenstein, the interviews will also touch upon almost every liberal or radical movement of the post-World War II period.
Allard Kenneth Lowenstein, (January 16, 1929–March 14, 1980), was a liberalDemocratic politician, a one-term congressman representing the 5th District in Nassau County, New York from 1969 until 1971.
Lowenstein was well known for his ability to attract energetic young volunteers for his political causes.
Lowenstein was a graduate of Horace Mann School in New York City and of Yale Law school in 1954.
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