The Greeks have a word for it: 66, Cosmopolitan, Κοσμοπολίτης

‘The Cosmopolitan Tradition: A Noble but Flawed Ideal’ by Martha Nussbaum was published in 2009

Patrick Comerford

I was discussing the thinking of the American philosopher, Martha Nussbaum of the University of Chicago, in a blog posting last night (1 August 2026), and her interest in the Greek classical world and the world of Greek philosophy as well as her commitment to principles of Reformed Judaism.

She has described cosmopolitanism – rooted in the Stoic tradition of radical equality of dignity for all – as a ‘noble but flawed ideal’, which became the subtitle of her book The Cosmopolitan Tradition: A Noble but Flawed Ideal (2009).

The word cosmopolitan, an important concept in modern philosophy and political discourse, is, of course, derived from the κοσμοπολίτης (kosmopoliítes) found in classical and koine Greek, formed from the words κόσμος (kosmos), world, universe, cosmos or created order, and πολίτης (politês), citizen, one of a city.

Contemporary usage defines the term as ‘citizen of the world’. But the word cosmopolitan was coined by the Greek philosopher Diogenes the Cynic or Diogenes of Sinope in the fourth century BCE. When Diogenes was asked from what city he hailed, he replied that he was a citizen of the world, κόσμος πολίτης (kósmos polítēs), or κοσμοπολίτης (kosmopolites), a citizen of the world, rejecting narrow local loyalties.

The plural, κόσμου πολῖται (kosmou politai), means ‘citizens of the world’ or even ‘citizens of the universe’, of the whole created order. The phrase originates from Cynic and Stoic philosophy, describing the idea that human beings belong to a single, universal community rather than being defined solely by their local city-state or nation. At the time, the broadest basis of social identity among Greeks was either the individual city-state or the culturally and linguistically homogeneous Hellenic group.

Diogenes lived from ca 413/403 to ca 324/321 BCE, and he was one of the founders of Cynicism. He was renowned for his ascetic lifestyle and radical critiques of social conventions, and he became a legendary figure whose life and teachings have been recounted, often through anecdote, in both antiquity and modernity.

Diogenes advocated a return to nature, the renunciation of wealth, and introduced early ideas of cosmopolitanism by proclaiming himself a citizen of the world. Rather than declaring his lineage, city, social class, or gender, he defined himself as a human being, implicitly asserting the equal worth of all human beings.

He spent the mild winters in Athens, surviving by begging and taking shelter in a large ceramic jar or πίθος (pithos), originally meant for food storage, and he spent the summers outdoors in Corinth, cooled by breezes from the isthmus.

Some sources say Diogenes died on the same night as Alexander the Great, 10-11 June 323 BCE, but this is likely legend.

Later thinkers like Seneca and Marcus Aurelius expanded this idea of cosmopolitanism from Diogenes, teaching that all people share a spark of universal reason and mutual brotherhood.

Stoicism, another Greek school of thought that was founded roughly a century later, built on Diogenes’ ideas, with many of its thinkers and adherents stressing that each human being ‘dwells ... in two communities – the local community of our birth, and the community of human argument and aspiration’.

In his circle model of identity, the Stoic Hierocles states that individuals should regard themselves as concentric circles: the first one around the self, followed by immediate family, extended family, local group, citizens, countrymen, humanity. Within these circles human beings feel a sense of affinity or endearment towards others, which the Stoics termed οἰκείωσις (oikeiôsis).

The task of world citizens becomes then to draw the circles somehow towards the centre, making all human beings more like our fellow city dwellers, and so forth.

The concept evolved into modern political and ethical cosmopolitanism, which argues that all human beings share equal moral worth and obligations, regardless of nationality. Today, people use the term to describe feeling connected to global culture, issues, and humanity as a whole rather than just one country.

Pithoi on Dimakopoulou street in Rethymnon … Diogene is said to have lived in Athens in a large ceramic jar or πίθος, pithos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Cosmopolitanism is the idea that all human beings are members of a single community. Its adherents are known as cosmopolitan or cosmopolite. Cosmopolitanism is both prescriptive and aspirational, believing humans can and should be world citizens in a universal community. The idea encompasses different dimensions and avenues of community, such as promoting universal moral standards, establishing global political structures, or developing a platform for mutual cultural expression and tolerance.

In his essay ‘Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch’ (1795), Immanuel Kant stages a ius cosmopoliticum (cosmopolitan law or right) as a guiding principle to help global society achieve permanent, enduring peace. Kant’s cosmopolitan right (Weltbürgerrecht, ‘world-citizen right’) stems from an understanding of all human beings as equal members of a universal community. Cosmopolitan rights thus work in tandem with international political rights, and the shared, universal right of humanity.

After World War II, as a reaction to the Holocaust and other atrocities, the concept of crimes against humanity became a generally accepted category in international law. This clearly shows the appearance and acceptance of a notion of individual responsibility that is considered to exist toward all of humanity. We know that many problems can only be addressed at the global level, such as global warming.

In her book The Cosmopolitan Tradition: A Noble but Flawed Ideal (2019), Martha Nussbaum engages critically with important examples of the cosmopolitan ideal from ancient Greece and Rome to the present. She pursues this ‘noble but flawed‘ vision of world citizenship as it finds expression in figures of Greco-Roman antiquity, Hugo Grotius in the 17th century, Adam Smith during the 18th century, and various contemporary thinkers.

In an interview, she linked cosmopolitanism with the pursuit of political justice. ‘Cosmopolitanism is certainly highly compatible with a personal attachment to a group that pursues justice. The difficulty comes with whether it is compatible with attachment to a particular nation, or state, or city, since those are political units and cosmopolitanism holds that one’s first loyalty should be to the entire world. I think it is flawed for several reasons.’

She summarised cosmopolitanism as a comprehensive doctrine of how to arrange one’s values, ‘and as such it is not a view that can become the object of what John Rawls calls an “overlapping consensus” among all the reasonable comprehensive doctrines of value, both secular and religious.’

She pointed to the 17th century Dutch humanist Hugo Grotius who said the nation has a moral importance. ‘It is the largest unit we know that is accountable to people’s voices and that can be a vehicle for their autonomy, their wish to give themselves laws of their own choosing. We should have special attachments to our own nation and channel global duties through those, I argue.’

She added that cosmopolitanism ‘is a form of humanism, and has nothing to say about duties to non-human animals and nature.’

Despite those nuances and reservations, the Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri had already stirred up controversy in a speech at the National Conservatism Conference in 2019, claiming the American middle class had been betrayed by an out-of-touch ‘cosmopolitan elite’ that catered to the needs of multinational companies while forgetting ‘the heartland’.

Given Brexit, Donald Trump’s election, and a global turn to nationalism, Hawley’s comments were anything but exceptional. What made them unique was that he directed his ire at particular academics for promulgating the beliefs of what he called the ‘cosmopolitan consensus’.

Martha Nussbaum of the University of Chicago was the best-known among the philosophers he attacked. Hawley misrepresented her when he accused her of teaching her students that ‘world citizenship’ trumps being the citizen of a nation-state.

Those wondering how Nussbaum might respond to Hawley’s criticism did not have long to wait. By coincidence, a little over a month later, Harvard University Press published The Cosmopolitan Tradition: A Noble but Flawed Ideal, in which she spends most of her time discussing the limits of cosmopolitanism while developing her own positive account of the nation-state and its responsibilities.

Cosmopolitanism – the idea that we are, first and foremost, citizens of the world rather than of a particular nation or region – is predicated on a universal respect for human dignity and a demand for justice regardless of race, sex, or creed. Nussbaum argues, however, that to arrive at this conception of human dignity, the cosmopolitans of earlier ages came to exclude worldly success or material wealth from their notions of the dignified life.

‘In order to treat people as having a dignity that life’s accidents cannot erode,’ she says, the founders of cosmopolitanism scoffed ‘at money, rank, and power, saying that they are unnecessary for human flourishing. The dignity of moral capacity is complete in itself.’

But cosmopolitanism continues to be misused as a term by figures on the political far right and used as a catch-all phrase to put down and dismissed those who question the politics of Trump and his MAGA circles. Recently, Stephen Miller, a Trump administration senior policy adviser and far-right thinker, publicly accused Jim Acosta of CNN of exhibiting ‘cosmopolitan bias’ during a discussion of a new Trump regime immigration plan.

Pithoi in Knossos … Diogene is said to have lived in Athens in a large ceramic jar or πίθος, pithos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Previous words in this series:

1, Neologism, Νεολογισμός.

2, Welcoming the stranger, Φιλοξενία.

3, Bread, Ψωμί.

4, Wine, Οίνος and Κρασί.

5, Yogurt, Γιαούρτι.

6, Orthodoxy, Ορθοδοξία.

7, Sea, Θᾰ́λᾰσσᾰ.

8,Theology, Θεολογία.

9, Icon, Εἰκών.

10, Philosophy, Φιλοσοφία.

11, Chaos, Χάος.

12, Liturgy, Λειτουργία.

13, Greeks, Ἕλληνες or Ρωμαίοι.

14, Mañana, Αύριο.

15, Europe, Εὐρώπη.

16, Architecture, Αρχιτεκτονική.

17, The missing words.

18, Theatre, θέατρον, and Drama, Δρᾶμα.

19, Pharmacy, Φᾰρμᾰκείᾱ.

20, Rhapsody, Ραψῳδός.

21, Holocaust, Ολοκαύτωμα.

22, Hygiene, Υγιεινή.

23, Laconic, Λακωνικός.

24, Telephone, Τηλέφωνο.

25, Asthma, Ασθμα.

26, Synagogue, Συναγωγή.

27, Diaspora, Διασπορά.

28, School, Σχολείο.

29, Muse, Μούσα.

30, Monastery, Μοναστήρι.

31, Olympian, Ολύμπιος.

32, Hypocrite, Υποκριτής.

33, Genocide, Γενοκτονία.

34, Cinema, Κινημα.

35, autopsy and biopsy

36, Exodus, ἔξοδος

37, Bishop, ἐπίσκοπος

38, Socratic, Σωκρατικὸς

39, Odyssey, Ὀδύσσεια

40, Practice, πρᾶξις

41, Idiotic, Ιδιωτικός

42, Pentecost, Πεντηκοστή

43, Apostrophe, ἀποστροφή

44, catastrophe, καταστροφή

45, democracy, δημοκρατία

46, ‘Αρχή, beginning, Τέλος, end

47, ‘Αποκάλυψις, Apocalypse

48, ‘Απόκρυφα, Apocrypha

49, Ἠλεκτρον (Elektron), electric

50, Metamorphosis, Μεταμόρφωσις

51, Bimah, βῆμα

52, ἰχθύς (ichthýs) and ψάρι (psari), fish.

53, Τὰ Βιβλία (Ta Biblia), The Bible

54, Φῐλοξενῐ́ᾱ (Philoxenia), true hospitality

55, εκκλησία (ekklesia), the Church

56, ναός (naos) and ἱερός (ieros), a church

57, Χριστούγεννα (Christougenna), Christmas

58, ἐπιφάνεια (epipháneia), θεοφάνεια, (theopháneia), Epiphany and Theophany

59, Ζέφυρος (Zéphuros), the West Wind

60, Αύριο (Avrio), Tomorrow

61, καλημέρα (κaliméra), ‘Good Morning’, and καλαμάρι, κalamári, ‘squid’

62, Ελευθερία ή θάνατος, ‘Freedom or Death’

63, Ποδόσφαιρο, ‘Football’

64, καφές (coffee), Φραπές (frappé)

65, Odyssey (η Οδύσσεια) and Odysseus (Ὀδυσσεύς)

66, Cosmopolitan, Κοσμοπολίτης

67, Εἰρήνη (Eirene), Peace

Series to be continued

Loumidis Papagalos Ekastos Kosmopolitis (Cosmopolitan) … a well-known brand of finely ground traditional Greek coffee

Martha Nussbaum: a philosopher’s odyssey from an Episcopalian childhood to Reform Judaism’s pursuit of political justice

Looking out from Preveli Monastery in Crete towards the island of Gavdos, said to be the Ogygia of Calypso where Odysseus stayed for seven years (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

While Christopher Nolan’s film The Odyssey was the topic of conversation, I was writing in recent weeks how the Revd Dr Giles Fraser, in ‘Thought for the Day’ on Radio 4 last month (24 July 2026), talked about an essay on why Odysseus is right to refuse the temptation to eternal life while he stranded with the nymph Calypso on the island of Ogygia.

He referred to the American philosopher Professor Martha Nussbaum of the University of Chicago, who he interviewed for The Guardian many years ago (29 June 2012). In his Thought for the Day’, he referred to how she argues that there are some things that the immortal gods are not able to do that mortal human beings are: not least amongst them is to show courage. If I cannot risk everything because I cannot die, he asked, then how could I possibly be courageous?

Martha Nussbaum, who is Jewish, suggests that there is something about this refusal of invulnerability that explains one of the key features of Christian theology: of God becoming human, of God who is prepared to suffer and die in the name of love. ‘What is attractive about both Odysseus and Jesus is that they are prepared to have skin in the game, which is pretty much the very definition of incarnation’, Giles Fraser says.

Since then, I have found myself reading some of the work of Martha Nussbaum, who is one of the world’s foremost public philosophers. She is Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, where she is part of both the law school and the philosophy department and and an associate member of the Divinity School faculty. She has also taught at Harvard and Brown.

In her work, Martha Nussbaum has engaged with ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, political philosophy, existentialism, feminism, and ethics, such as animal rights. She has written more than two dozen books, including The Fragility of Goodness (1986), she has received a number of prestigious international prizes, and some years ago she was considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Martha Nussbaum was born Martha Craven in New York on 6 May 1947, the daughter of George Craven, a Philadelphia lawyer, and Betty Warren, an interior designer, and grew up in an affluent Episcopalian home in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Her mother was an alcoholic whose forbears arrived on the Mayflower; her father was a successful southern-born lawyer from Georgia and she has described him as ‘bigoted against African Americans and Jews.’

She has spoken of her upbringing as ‘East Coast WASP elite … very sterile, very preoccupied with money and status’. She later explained her impatience with ‘mandarin philosophers’ and her dedication to public service as a repudiation of her own upbringing: ‘I don’t like anything that sets itself up as an in-group or an elite, whether it is the Bloomsbury group or Derrida’.

She studied theatre and classics at New York University (BA 1969) and philosophy at Harvard (MA 1972, PhD 1975), and went on to teach philosophy and classics at Harvard, Brown University, and the University of Chicago Law School.

Her book The Fragility of Goodness, Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (1986) made her a well-known figure throughout the humanities. In that book, she confronts the ethical dilemma that individuals strongly committed to justice are nevertheless vulnerable to external factors that may deeply compromise or even negate their human flourishing, and she defends the practical ethics of Aristotle over the metaphysical supernaturalism of Plato.

She rejects the Platonic notion that human goodness can fully protect against peril, siding with the tragic playwrights and Aristotle in treating the acknowledgment of vulnerability as a key to realising the human good. Her interpretation of Plato’s Symposium in particular drew considerable attention.

Further books, including The Closing of the American Mind (1987) and Frontiers of Justice (2006), established her as a theorist of global justice. She has also written about the unequal freedoms and opportunities of women, and has developed a distinctive type of feminism, drawing inspiration from the liberal tradition but emphasising that liberalism, at its best, entails radical rethinking of gender relations and relations within the family.

In her philosophical work, she has also written widely about emotions and about grief, compassion, and love, and about disgust and shame. Following a court trial in Colorado in which she gave evidence, Nussbaum wrote a lengthy article on ‘Platonic Love and Colorado Law’, drawing on Plato’s Symposium and his interactions with Socrates as evidence for her argument.

In Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education (1997), she appeals to classical Greek texts as a basis for the defence and reform of the liberal education. She notes how Greek cynic philosopher Diogenes aspired to transcend ‘local origins and group memberships’ in favour of becoming ‘a citizen of the world’.

In Sex and Social Justice (1999), she argues that sex and sexuality are morally irrelevant distinctions that have been artificially enforced as sources of social hierarchy, and that feminism and social justice have common concerns. She shows how sex is used to deny some people, including women and gay men, social justice.

In Hiding from Humanity (2004), Nussbaum examines the arguments for including two emotions – shame and disgust – as legitimate bases for legal judgments, and notes how projective disgust has wrongly justified group subordination, mainly of women, Jews, and homosexuals. She dismisses disgust as a reliable basis of judgment.

In From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation and Constitutional Law (2010), Nussbaum analyses the role that disgust plays in law and public debate in the US, including the constitutional legal issues facing gay and lesbian people. She argues that the fundamental motivation of those advocating legal restrictions against gay and lesbian people is a ‘politics of disgust’.

She explicitly opposes the concept of a disgust-based morality as an appropriate guide for legislating. Nussbaum notes that popular disgust has been used throughout history as a justification for persecution, and recalls how at various times, racism, antisemitism and sexism, have all been driven by popular revulsion.

In Creating Capabilities (2011), she outlines a unique theory on the Capability approach or the Human development approach. She criticises existing economic indicators, such as GDP, for failing to fully account for quality of life and assurance of basic needs, instead rewarding countries with large growth distributed highly unequally across the population, and she argues the Capability approach should be prioritised by development economics policymakers.

In The New Religious Intolerance, Overcoming the Politics of Fear in an Anxious Age (2012), she writes a vigorous defence of the religious freedom of minorities in the face of post-9/11 Islamophobia. And, as Giles Fraser said in The Guardian at the time, by minorities she mostly means Muslims.

Her book The Cosmopolitan Tradition: A Noble but Flawed Ideal (2019), engages critically with important examples of the cosmopolitan ideal from ancient Greece and Rome to the present. The cosmopolitan political tradition in Western thought begins with the Greek Cynic Diogenes, who, when asked where he came from, responded that he was a citizen of the world. Rather than declaring his lineage, city, social class, or gender, he defined himself as a human being, implicitly asserting the equal worth of all human beings. Nussbaum pursues this ‘noble but flawed‘ vision of world citizenship as it finds expression in figures of Greco-Roman antiquity, Hugo Grotius in the 17th century, Adam Smith during the 18th century, and various contemporary thinkers.

Earlier that year, the Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, speaking at the National Conservatism Conference in 2019, claimed the American middle class had been betrayed by an out-of-touch ‘cosmopolitan elite’ that catered to the needs of multinational companies while forgetting ‘the heartland’. Given Brexit, Donald Trump’s election, and a global turn to nationalism more generally, Hawley’s comments were anything but exceptional. What made them unique was that he directed his ire at particular academics for promulgating the beliefs of what he called the ‘cosmopolitan consensus’. Perhaps the best-known of these was Martha Nussbaum, wh o was accused by Hawley of teaching her students that ‘world citizenship’ trumps being the citizen of a nation-state.

Her latest book is The Republic of Love: Opera and Political Freedom, published earlier this year by Oxford University Press.

Nussbaum has criticised Noam Chomsky as one of the left-wing intellectuals who hold the belief that ‘one should not criticise one’s friends, that solidarity is more important than ethical correctness’.

She is known for her contributions in developing the capabilities approach to well-being, in which she asks, ‘What is each person able to do and to be?’ She asserts that all humans – and non-human animals – have a basic right to dignity. To provide human dignity, she insists governments must provide ‘at least a threshold level’ of a number of capabilities: life; bodily health; bodily integrity; senses, imagination, and thought, emotions; practical reason; affiliation; other species; play; and control over one's environment, including political and material environments.

‘Knowledge is no guarantee of good behaviour, but ignorance is a virtual guarantee of bad behaviour’ … Martha C Nussbaum (Photograph: University of Chicago Divinity School

From 1969 to 1987, Martha Nussbaum was married to Professor Alan Nussbaum of Yale and Cornell, a linguist and classical philologist known for his work on the language of the Homeric epics. During their marriage, she converted to Judaism and her commitment to Judaism has continued. She became a bat mitzvah at Temple KAM Isaiah Israel in Chicago in 2008, delivering a D’var Torah on the connection between genuine, non-narcissistic consolation and the pursuit of global justice.

For Nussbaum, coming to Judaism was both comfort and reprieve. She has described ‘the combination of joy and relief I found in entering a community in which outrage at injustice was normal.’

She soon came to appreciate the Jewish tradition of spirited debate. ‘In great contrast to my Christian education, focused on catechism and professions of faith,’ she wrote, ‘I discovered that in a Jewish conversion process it was possible to dispute about everything.’

Whether treating literary, legal, or political issues, she has consistently argued that any comprehensive ideology that claims to understand the good life fails unless it is accompanied by a love for that which is imperfect and vulnerable. ‘Philosophy does not compel, or threaten, or mock,’ she has said. ‘It doesn’t make bare assertions, but, instead, sets up a structure of thought in which a conclusion follows from premises the listener is free to dispute. In that way it invites dialogue and respects the listener.’

In her essay ‘Judaism and the Love of Reason,’ she describes her love for the ideas of the leaders of 19th century Reform Judaism, a movement she praises for its rationalism, its moral mission and commitment to justice, and for ‘returning the religion to its original Biblical core.’

In Women and Human Development (2000), she criticises secular feminists for ascribing patriarchy to religious traditions. In ‘Judaism and the Love of Reason’, she cites feminism and cosmopolitanism as ‘issues that have been at the heart of the Reform movement since its inception and to which Reform Judaism gives … more satisfactory answers than do other varieties of Judaism.’

In an interview with Benjamin Balint in Sources in Spring 2022, Martha Nussbaum said she does not ‘even really think that Biblical Judaism is inherently patriarchal. I once wrote a paper on the Creation stories in Genesis and learned a lot about how great interpreters have read Genesis 1 as holding that the first human was a hermaphrodite. And there are many other ways in which the apparently misogynistic aspects of the text have been differently interpreted by great textual scholars.’

Asked why religious ritual is important for people who seek to live a moral life, she cited Immanuel Kant, who ‘said that people have a duty to join a religious group of the right sort (the rational sort, and Reform Judaism is pretty much the rational religion he had in mind), because we are all weak and inclined to deviate from the moral law, but in a group with others our resolve is strengthened.’

In her speech when she received an honorary degree from Hebrew University in Jerusalem, she painted a portrait of the Judaism that inspires her, including the commitment to correct injustices in the community and to welcome all strangers.

The Israeli novelist David Grossman, who received an honorary degree the same day, said to her that that is the sort of Judaism Israel needs. In his speech, he talked about the capacity of the literary imagination to see the infinite in each person, and to cross the boundaries that divide us in life. He then asked whether that capacity is being lost in the Israel of today.

She told Benjamin Balint, ‘So that is what Reform strengthens, I believe: that imaginative capacity to see the infinite in each person and to welcome the stranger.’ And, she added, ‘the Judaism I belong to requires the pursuit of political justice.’

Are we in danger of ignoring the 14 signs of the rise of fascism in the US and Britain?

Standing against fascism on the streets of London almost 90 years ago … the Battle of Cable Street on Sunday 4 October 1936 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The choice of the Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize is particularly apt. It comes after a month of constant bombing by the Trump regime of fishing boats in Caribbean waters simply because they fly the flags of Venezuela and Colombia, without supporting evidence for the excuses given and in violation of international law.

I do not agree where María Corina Machado stands on many political issues, nor am comfortable with many of her social values and views. But deomcracy is not democracy if it is not also for those democrats I do not agree with. If you want regime change, then María Corina Machado shows how to do it peacefully, unlike the Trump regime.

Trump is huffing and puffing. He thinks he has brought peace to the Middle East, and, honestly, I truly hope that in some way he has. But if peace arrives, it has been long overdue.

I am reminded of the epigram by the Roman historian Tacitus in his biography of his father-in-law, Agricola: ‘They make a desert and call it peace’. It is part of a speech by the Caledonian chieftain Calgacus, in which he condemns the Roman invaders, saying they ‘ravage, slaughter, and usurp under false titles; and that ‘where they make a desert, they call it peace’ – ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant – and it remains a critique of imperialism and the nature of violent conquest.

We may have peace, of sorts, in Middle East, but the hostages have yet to return to their families, much of Gaza is still going to remain occupied, the people of Gaza have been given no hope for either democracy or housing, and Gaza has been turned into a desert that is going to remain without peace for decades, if not generations.

Perhaps the real reasons any agreement has been reached in recent days is because Nethanyahu overstepped the mark when his planes bombed Qatar and tried to take out the Hamas negotiators. Without Qatar has a broker, and without anyone in Hamas left to talk to, the Middle East faced the prospect of a catastrophe close to Armageddon-like proportions.

I am sure too that the coalition parties that have supported Nethanyahu fear the generational consequences of the criticism they face from the families of the hostages, and were warned that continued in havoc and devastation in Gaza have become a contributing factor – not matter how illogical and offensive that is – in the rise of antisemitism.

Trump’s demands for the Nobel Prize are petulant and, as if he couldn’t get any lower – debasing. This is the man who claims the wars he has ended include a war between ‘Aber-baijan’ and Albania, although there is no such place as ‘Aber-baijan’, and he may have been referring to Azerbaijan and Armenia. Nor have Serbia and Kosovo or Egypt and Ethiopia recently gone to war, the border exhanges between Cambodia and Thailand never amounted to war and Malaysia was the mediator, the agreement between Rwanda and DRC signed in the White House, and both Pakistan and India, like Serbia and Kosovo, deny Trump every played a role in their negotiationss.

Trump’s promise was to end Russia’s war against Ukraine a key pledge in his re-election failed. The war continues relentlessly, nor has he ever renounced his desires to annex Greenland or even Canada. Meanwhile, war is being glorified and the Defence Department has been relabelled the War Department



Trump's obsession with the Nobel Peace Prize has taken internation attention away from the reality that rvery hour in every day brings yet another event in the White House or on the streets of towns and cities in the US that everone of us ought to find shocking. Here are 14 example of what has happened In the past week or two:

1, we have heard Trump in the White House admit he is taking away freedom of speech in defiance of court rulings;

2, government has been shut down and the Democrats are being blamed, even though the Republicans control the House, the Senate and the White House;

3, Trump has called for the arrest of the Mayor of Chicago and the Governor of Illinois, local politicians are being arrested by ICE on the streets, at press conferences and in hospitals, without warrants and without IDs;

4, a Presbyterian pastor, the Revd David Black, was shot in the head in Chicago by ICE agents who then laughed to one another;

5, congressional electoral boundaries are being redrawn to fix the elections next year;

6, funding is being withdrawn capriciously from universities and academics are being denied permission to leave the US, in a parallel of the old Soviet way of denying exit visas;

7, racial profiling is now being used in making decksions about who to detain;

8, armed and masked men refuse to identify themselves as they lift people off the streets, family homes are being raided and families being broken up, and children don’t know where their parents are;

9, allies are traduced and betrayed, enemies are rewarded, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been humiliated while Putin has been feted;

10, people who are legally resident in the US are being deported to countries they never heard of and never lived in, or missing and unaccounted for, with no-one in charge being answerable or caring about these lost human lives;

11, troops have been deployed on the streets of Chicago, Washington DC, Portland and Memphis against the people they are supposed to defend and in defiance of locally elected state authorities;

12, pressure is put on television channels to sack comedians, journalists are being expelled from the White House press pool, and those who have tried to make Trump accountable legally in the past, including the former FBI director James Comey and the Attorney General of New York Letitia James, are being pursued through the courts with weaponised fraud charges;

13, the spectre of a non-existent organisation, Antifa, has been created and labelled ‘terrorist’ when there is no such organisation and the word simply means ‘anti-fascist’;

14, Pete Hesgeth has been shown to draw inspiration from and to plagiarise the speeches of Goebbels …

It is only a few years since any one of these events on any one day would have made headline news in newspapers and on major television news shows across the world. Had so many things happened in such a short span of time a few years ago in a small country in Central America or Latin America, there would have been sanctions or even a US-led invasion.

Have we become inured to what is happening in the US? We are no longer shocked or surprised. It is no longer headline news. And what comes out of MAGA mouths was parroted and mimicked by speaker after speaker at both the Reform and the Conservative party conferences in recent weeks.

If Robert Jenrick bothered, he might have seen the Handsworth I know, which is diverse, creative, culturally vibrant and has much that is beautiful (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Robert Jenrick fuelled a fire of toxic nationalism after he doubled down during the Conservative Party conference this week on his comments about not seeing another white face in Handsworth. He spent, on his own admission, all of 90 minutes in Handsworth, but thinks he’s so knowledgeable about the place to tell Tories in Aldrige-Brownhills that it is ‘absolutely appalling. It’s as close as I’ve come to a slum in this country.’ He claims it’s not the kind of Britain – or Britian if you’re eating Badenoch-branded chocolate – he wants to live in. To make what he said even worse, he said unashamedly, he ‘didn’t see another white face there.’

There are some points I tried to make on Facebook earlier this week in response:

1, 90 minutes do not make someone an expert analyst on any topic, particularly if most of those 90 minutes are spent looking down at litter on the street or looking into a camera, rather than looking people in the face, or, even better talking to them.

2, Jenrick seems to want to talk to white people only. He did not talk to or listen to anyone who was not white. What sort of human being denies the dignity and shared humanity of another person because of their ethnicity or culture? There is only one word to answer that.

3, Jenrick thinks Handsworth is ‘as close as I’ve come to a slum in this country.’ Obviously, he does not know what a true slum is like, he has never visited a real slum. But then, if he had, he could not be so slick about the words he spouts out in his rush to judgment. Indeed, if he had ever visited some of the slums I know, and had a conscience, he would abandon his political and social opinions.

4, And Jenrick came with prejudice in the sense of pre-judging what to expect: if he bothered, he might have seen the Handsworth I know, which is diverse, creative, culturally vibrant and has much that is beautiful. Rushing to judgment without looking around you, without listening to people, without talking to them, and without respecting their lifestyle and integrity is contributing to shaping a Britain than none of us should want to emerge in the future.

Jenrick has described himself as an ‘Anglofuturist’. But Hope Not Hate, the anti-racist think-tank, has shown how Anglofuturist accounts on social media are full of AI-generated images moon bases emblazoned with the Union Jack, giant spaceships hovering over Westminster, and Maglev trains zooming through green and pleasant countryside.

Beneath the surface, however, some of the most prominent advocates in the Anglofuturist movement are deeply racist. The Hope Not Hare analysis of Anglofuturism raises awkward questions for Jenrick – who hopes soon to lead the Conservative Party – and the movement as a whole.

MAGA ideas have infected British politics. We can expected them to inspire Reform and their far-right partners painting flags on roundabouts, protesting outside hotels that house huddled and frightened asylum seekers, and waving their flags through the streets of London. But it is sad indeed how they have also become acceptable within one of the mainstream political parties. One Nation Tories are now very thin on the ground indeed, and figures such as Michael Heseltine (Lord Heseltine), Dominic Grieve and Andy Street seem to have become lone voices in their own party.

Standing against fascism … part of the mural at Saint George’s Town Hall commemorating the Battle of Cable Street in October 1936 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Democratic mayoral candidate for New York City, Zohran Mamdani, said this week, ‘No one should be surprised that Donald Trump is employing fascist tactics – prosecuting his opponents, weaponising the federal government and attacking the very fabric of our democracy.’

Writing in the Guardian today, the former Prime Minister Gordon Browne says the rise of Reform UK has parallels with the rise of the hard right in 'in every one of Europe's major countries and from India and Thailand to the US and Argentina, and the examples he cites from across Europe include Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands and Slovakia.

But if democrats -- left, right and centre -- are going to unite to defeat the rise of this new fascism, it is important to ask: what is Fascism, and what is Anti-Fascism?

In a paper ‘Fascism Anyone?’ in the Spring 2003 edition of Free Inquiry, Lawrence Britt outlines 14 characteristics of fascism.

Britt studied the fascist regimes in many places in the 20th century, including Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy, Franco in Spain, Salazar in Portugal, Suharto in Indonesia, the colonels in Greece and Pinochet in Chile. He found they had 14 elements in common, which he calls the identifying characteristics of fascism.

A similar list is based on his political novel June, 2004 about an authoritarian government in the US under a Republican administration. The book was published in 1998, while the list is found in an article published in 2003.

Britt’s 14 characteristics of fascism are:

1, Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism

2, Disdain for the importance of human rights

3, Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause

4, The supremacy of the military/avid militarism

5, Rampant sexism

6, A controlled mass media

7, Obsession with national security

8, Religion and ruling elite tied together

9, Power of corporations protected

10, Power of labour suppressed or eliminated

11, Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts

12, Obsession with crime and punishment

13, Rampant cronyism and corruption

14, Fraudulent elections

The Italian philosopher and author, Umberto Eco (1932-2016), is best known in the English-speaking world for his popular novel The Name of the Rose (1980). He also wrote extensively on fascism. In his essay ‘Ur-Fascism’ or ‘Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt’ (Il fascismo Eterno, or Ur-Fascismo), first published in 1995, Eco provided an analysis of fascism and a definition of fascism, discussed the fundamental characteristics and traits of fascism, and out forward some principles by which we can recognise fascism today.

He too identified 14 characteristics of fascism:

1, The cult of tradition: ‘One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.’

2, The rejection of modernism: ‘The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.’

3, The cult of action for action’s sake: ‘Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.’

4, Disagreement is treason: ‘The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.’

5, Fear of difference.: ‘The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.’

6, Appeal to a frustrated middle class: ‘One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.’

7, The obsession with a plot: ‘The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia.’

8, The enemy is both strong and weak: ‘By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.’

9, Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy: ‘For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.’

10, Contempt for the weak: ‘Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.’

11, Everybody is educated to become a hero: ‘In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.’

12, Machismo and weaponry: ‘Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of non-standard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.’

13, Selective populism: ‘There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.’

14, Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak: ‘All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.’

I can identify most of the 14 traits on both lists in the behaviour of the Trump regime and some right-wing politcians in the UK.

How many can you identify in speeches at the Reform and Conservative party conferences?

Meanwhile, as Charlie Kirk is being transformed into the Horst Wessel of the MAGA movement, I can imagine that somewhere in an attic in America or in an hotel room in England, a young girl is hiding, writing a diary.

Lyela Brandeis Comerford (1880-1946), grand-daughter of Los Angeles rabbi and wife of Judge Frank Comerford

Lyela Julia Edelman Brandeis Comerford (1880-1946), the descendant of an interesting and pioneering Jewish family in Los Angeles and wife of Judge Frank D Comerford (1879-1929)

Patrick Comerford

In the past, I have written about Judge Frank D Comerford (1879-1929), the Chicago judge, Democratic politician, journalist and author, and his nephew, the Very Revd Professor Comerford Joseph O’Malley (1902-1991)who was President and Chancellor of DePaul University, Chicago.

They were members of an interesting branch of the Comerford family which once had homes in Kinvara, Co Galway, and Ballykeel House, Kilfenora, Co Clare.

In my research in recent days, I have also come across the story of Judge Frank Comerford’s wife, Lyela Julia Edelman Brandeis Comerford (1880-1946), the descendant of an interesting and pioneering Jewish family in Los Angeles.

Lyela Comerford was a granddaughter of the first resident rabbi in Los Angeles, a niece of both the architect and a president of the best-known synagogue in Los Angeles, Wilshire Boulevard Temple, and she was a sister-in-law of one of the passengers who died on the Titanic in 1912.

With her family background, and Hollywood connections, and life on Park Avenue in Manhattan, many may have thought Lyela Comerford was born to a glamorous society or star-filled life. Instead, she was widowed twice, and was swindled and defrauded by another husband.

Her first husband was a member of a prominent Jewish business and legal family who gave their name to a ‘Hidden Ivies’ university; her second husband was a fraudster who swindled her out of her immense widow’s fortune; and her third husband, Judge Frank Comerford, was the descendant of a prominent branch of the Comerford family in Co Galway.

Rabbi Abraham Wolf Edelman (1832-1907), grandfather of Lyela Julia Edelman Brandeis Comerford

Lyela Julia Edelman was born on 2 March 1880 in Los Angeles, California. She was the daughter of Benjamin W Edelman (1853-1922) and Laura Morris Studebaker (1863-1939). Benjamin Edelman’s father and Lyela Comerford’s grandfather was Rabbi Abraham Wolf Edelman (1832-1907), the pioneer rabbi of Los Angeles. He was born in Poland in 1832, he married Hannah Pessah Cohn in Warsaw in 1851, and they then moved to the US. Eight years later, they were living in San Francisco, where Abraham continued his Hebrew studies, teaching Hebrew, and for a time acting as a dry goods salesman.

When Rabbi Edelman arrived in the pueblo of Los Angles, it was still a wild west frontier town. Joseph Newmark (1799-1881), the founder of the first Ashkenazic congregation in New York and then the organiser of the Jewish community in Los Angeles, persuaded Abraham Edelman to come to Los Angeles as its first full-time rabbi and Jewish spiritual leader. He served Congregation B’nai B’rith from its beginnings in 1862 until 1885, and for more than two decades he was the Jewish spiritual leader of Los Angeles.

Rabbi Edelman is said to have been a ‘traditional’ Orthodox rabbi – although this was not quite accurate. There were two good reasons for his move to Los Angeles: the children needed a teacher to help them maintain their Jewish identity and spiritual heritage, and the adults wanted a Jewish spokesman and ambassador. Edelman fulfilled both roles and combined the offices of rabbi and cantor. But he never claimed ordination, and before coming to Los Angeles he had never held a pulpit.

Rabbi Edelman eventually became the victim of his own success and the growth of the Jewish community in Los Angeles. He retired in 1886, although, in reality, he had been eased out in a way calculated to spare the rabbi’s feelings and to protect the congregation.

Joseph Newmark’s nephew, Harris Newmark, who was President of B’nai B’rith Congregation in 1881-1887, claimed Edelman felt he had to resign when the synagogue wanted a more Reform or liberal ritual. But the evidence suggests that Edelman was never part of a truly Orthodox establishment. He had shown signs of non-Orthodox leanings, and allowed mixed seating for men and women, a mixed choir, conformation ceremonies, and English prayers and sermons.

Congregation B’nai B’rith developed a type of Reform Judaism that was grounded in tradition yet committed to contemporary relevance. However, despite the community’s growth, Rabbi Edelman lacked the glamour desired in a new era. Los Angeles still loved ‘old Edelman,’ but they decided to sideline him. From June 1885 to June 1886, he served Congregation Ahavai Sholom in Portland, Oregon, but he resigned after a year, citing the ‘dampness of the Oregon climate,’ and returned to Los Angeles.

Abraham and Hannah Edelman were the parents of six children, two daughters and four sons, including: Benjamin W Edelman (1853-1922), the father of Lyela Julia (Edelman) Comerford; Abram M Edelman (1863-1941), a prolific architect in Los Angeles; and Dr David W Edelman. Congregation B’nai B’rith was rebuilt in the Moorish style in 1929 and soon after was renamed the Wilshire Boulevard Temple; its president at the time was Dr David W Edelman and its architect was Abram M Edelman, sons of the founding rabbi and uncles of Lyela Brandeis Comerford.

The Wilshire Boulevard Temple, formerly Congregation B’nai B’rith, is a Reform congregation and synagogue and the oldest and one of the largest Jewish congregations in Los Angeles. The main building has a large Byzantine Revival dome modelled on the Pantheon in Rome, and the interior murals were commissioned by the Warner Brothers, Jack Harry and Albert.

Wilshire Boulevard Temple has been led by several influential rabbis, including Edgar Magnin, described as the ‘John Wayne’ of rabbis and the ‘rabbi to the stars’, who served for 69 years, from 1915 to 1984. It was designated as a City of Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monument in 1973 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981.

Wilshire Boulevard Temple, closely linked with Lyela Brandeis Comerford’s family

Lyela Julia (Edelman) Comerford was born in Los Angeles on 2 March 1880. She was 20 in 1900 when she married her first husband, H Hugo Brandeis (1868-1912), at the Los Angeles home of her aunt, Rachel L Barnett (1857-1950), and uncle William G Barnet (1852-1930). The wedding was performed by her grandfather, Rabbi Abraham Edelman, assisted by Rabbi Sigmund Hecht (1849-1925), who had become the senior rabbi in Los Angeles in 1899.

Hugo Brandeis was born in Wisconsin in January 1868. His family owned a large department store chain in Omaha, Nebraska. He was the son of Jonas Leopold Brandeis (1836-1903), a dry goods merchant, and Francesca Teweles (1845-1905), both were Jewish immigrants.

The Brandeis family was once a prominent rabbinic family in Prague. The extended Brandeis family included the Dante scholar Irma Brandeis (1905-1999); and Louis Dembitz Brandeis (1856-1941), an associate justice on the US Supreme Court ( 1916-1939), who gave his name to Brandeis University.

Judge Louis Brandeis was the first Jew to be named to the Supreme Court. During his career, he fought railroad monopolies, defended workplace and labour laws, challenged antisemitism and helped create the Federal Reserve System. He criticised the power of large banks, money trusts, powerful corporations, monopolies, public corruption, and mass consumerism. He was a courageous and militant advocate of social justice. He was seen as being incorruptible, was known as the ‘People’s Lawyer’, and The Economist called him ‘A Robin Hood of the law.’

Jonas Leopold Brandeis was from Libeň in Prague, then in the Austrian empire and now the capital of the Czech Republic. Franciska ‘Fannie’ Teweles was born in Prague. They emigrated to the US around 1856 and were married in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, around 1862.

Jonas Leopold Brandeis was the founder of the successful dry goods business, JL Brandeis & Sons. His wife was a wealthy patron of the arts and was a founder of the Wise Memorial Hospital in Omaha and its president from 1901 until she died in 1905. They are buried in Pleasant Hill Jewish Cemetery in North Omaha, also known as Temple Israel Cemetery, the oldest Jewish Cemetery in Nebraska.

Hugo Brandeis was one of four children, and his siblings were: Arthur Donoen Brandeis (1862-1916); Sarah (1867-1936), who married Herman Cohn; and Emil Franklin Brandeis (1864-1912). Emil Brandeis died on the Titanic on 14/15 April 1912. It was falsely rumoured that he tried to sneak onto one of the life boats by putting on a dress. When his body was recovered, he was buried in Pleasant Hill Jewish Cemetery, Omaha.

Hugo Brandeis was the youngest partner in JL Brandeis with his brother and was a prominent dry goods merchant in Omaha. He died at the age of 44 on 21 July 1912 in hospital in Omaha, Nebraska, after an operation, and was buried in Pleasant Hill Jewish Cemetery. He left Leyla a widow with a substantial fortune.

Two years later, Lyela married her second husband, Charles Wesley Turner jr (1885-1941), in London on 27 August 1914. He managed the Brandeis Theatre in Omaha and was also a stockbroker. He had previously been married in 1909 to Etta May Schneider (1886-1969), and when Charles and Etta divorced she returned to live with her parents in Dodge, Nebraska.

In a dramatic turn of events less than four years of their marriage, Charles Wesley Turner was convicted on 26 May 1918 in New York of theft from his wife through a securities fraud of $35,000 – in all, Lyela claimed, he had defrauded her of $325,000. He was later drafted into the US army, and they were divorced in 1919. Turner later married his third wife, Janet Megrew (1904-1988), but they had divorced by 1940, and he died in Chester, New Jersey, on 18 June 1941.

Judge Frank D Comerford (1879-1929) … a judge in Chicago, a Democratic politician, a journalist and an author

Lyela married her third husband, Frank D Comerford (1879-1929), in the Municipal Building in Manhattan, New York, on 10 November 1926. She gave her name as Leyla Studebaker Brandeis, and was living at 570 Park Avenue, a remarkable 13-storey building designed in the Georgian style by the architect Emery Roth (1870-1948).

Frank Comerford was a judge in Illinois, a Democratic politician, a journalist and an author. Their wedding came as a surprise to their friends and was attended only by Lyela’s mother, Laura Morris Studebaker, and ‘a few intimate friends’.

Frank D Comerford was born on 25 September 1879 in Chicago. He was the son of Isaac Comerford (1829-1900) of Kinvara, Co Galway, and Mary ‘Jane’ (Linnane) Comerford (1841-1914). Isaac Comerford of Kinvara was a younger brother of Henry Comerford (1827-1861), a prominent Galway merchant and magistrate who lived at Merchant’s Road, Galway, and Ballykeel House, Kilfenora, Co Clare. Henry bought up the Gregory estate in Kinvara in the 1850s and his post-Famine efforts to impose exorbitant rent increases in the town brought financial ruin to Kinvara and brought the Comerford family to the brink of social and economic disaster.

Isaac Comerford remained in Kinvara as a shopkeeper for about a decade, and married Mary Jane Linnane. Their first seven children were born in Kinvara: Henry (1858), John Henry (1859), Mary (1860), Bridget (1861), Michael (1862), Alice ‘Ella’ (1863) and George Henry (1865). Isaac and Mary Jane Comerford emigrated to the US around 1866, and settled in Chicago, Illinois, and five more children were born there: Elizabeth (1867), Jane (1871), Thomas Joseph (1877), Anne (1878) and Frank (1879).

Frank D Comerford studied at Northwestern University and the Illinois College of Law in Chicago. After graduation, he was admitted to the Illinois State Bar in 1904. Later that year, at the age of 24, Comerford was elected to the Illinois State Senate in November 1904 from the 2nd District, representing part of Cook County, Illinois.

Three months later, Frank D Comerford was expelled from the Illinois State Senate in February 1905 for allegedly besmirching the name of the Senate at a lecture in Chicago in which he accused the Senate of corruption. He was the first elected official expelled from the Illinois legislature.

In a speech at the Illinois College of Law, he claimed the state senate was merely ‘a great public auction, where special privileges are sold to the highest corporation bidders.’ He made specific accusations of wrongdoing, named names, and gave dates and financial details. He tried to protect himself by saying these stories were ‘in common circulation at the Capitol.’

The Illinois legislature quickly passed a resolution that accused Comerford of spreading ‘assertions, slanders, insinuations and incriminations’ that called into question ‘the honour and integrity of the Illinois General Assembly.’ A special committee of the Illinois House of Representatives was hastily established and took extensive testimony before deciding Comerford’s allegations were unfounded.

The report of the special committee was placed before the House on 8 February 1905, and the newly-elected Senator was expelled on a 121-13 vote. Unbowed, Comerford ran for the seat again – this time as an independent – and was re-elected. He was unsuccessful in his bid for re-election in 1906, however, and later accepted a position as police attorney of Chicago under the Democratic mayor, Edward Fitzsimmons Dunne. Comerford set up his own private practice as an attorney in 1917, and after the US entered World War I in 1917 he spent the rest of the war as a public speaker selling bonds on behalf of the Liberty Loan programme.

After World War I, Comerford travelled to London and Paris for six months in 1919. He witnessed at first hand the rapidly changing social and political situation and contributed news reports to the Chicago Tribune. He was a vocal advocate of the US joining the League of Nations, warning that ‘the failure to establish a League of Nations would be a world tragedy and in its wake may come revolution.’

Comerford was the special prosecutor in the 1920 case of William Bross Lloyd and members of the Communist Labor Party of America. The defence attorney Clarence Darrow later defended the teacher John T Scopes in the 1925 Scopes ‘Monkey’ Trial, in which he opposed the statesman and orator William Jennings Bryan. Comerford was elected to the bench as a Superior Court judge in Chicago in June 1926.

Frank D Comerford was twice married. On 19 March 1906, he married in Saint Joseph’s Church, Berrien, Michigan, Jean Cowgill (1875-1948). They later divorced, and on 10 November 1926 in Manhattan, he married the widowed Lyela Edelman Brandeis (1880-1946) from Omaha, Nebraska.

The widowed Lyela Brandeis married Frank Comerford in Manhattan on 10 November 1926

Lyela and Frank Comerford spent their honeymoon in Cuba, and then returned to Chicago to live at the Lake Shore Drive Hotel.

Frank Comerford complained of chest pain while visiting his brother’s home in Chicago on 29 August 1929. Two of his nephews, Dr Francis Xavier O’Malley (1895-1974) and Dr John Gabriel O’Malley (1888-1935), were called to the house. Neither doctor found anything obviously wrong, however, and he was not taken to hospital. At 8:55 pm, however, Comerford suffered a massive heart attack and died five minutes later. He was 49 years old. He was buried at Rosehill Cemetery and Mausoleum in Chicago.

After Frank Comerford died, Lyela continued to live in Chicago until 1940, and later lived in Paolo Alto, California. She had been widowed twice, divorced once, and defrauded by one of those hubans. She had no children. Lyela died on 30 July 1946 at the age of 66 in Los Angeles, and she was buried not with Frank Comerford but alongside her first husband, Hugo Brandeis, in Pleasant Hill Jewish Cemetery, Omaha, Nebraska.

Her gravestone names her as Lyela Brandeis Comerford, without any reference to her second husband, Charles Wesley Turner jr.

זכרונה לברכה, May her memory be a blessing.

Lyela Brandeis Comerford’s gravestone in Pleasant Hill Jewish Cemetery, Omaha, Nebraska (Photograph: Mike Hughbanks, Find a Grave)

Comerford O’Malley, the priest who shaped DePaul University, Chicago

The Very Revd Professor Comerford Joseph O’Malley (1902-1991) … President and Chancellor of DePaul University, Chicago

Patrick Comerford

My explorations of former Comerford family homes in Co Clare and Co Galway during this summer’s ‘road trips’ have led to finding the interesting stories of more members of the Comerford family.

Earlier this week, I was recalling the interesting life of Judge Frank D Comerford (1879-1929), a judge in Chicago and a Democratic politician who was expelled from the Illinois State Senate, whose parents and elder siblings from Kinvara, Co Galway.

Judge Comerford was an uncle of the Very Revd Professor Comerford Joseph O’Malley (1902-1991), who was a professor, president and chancellor at DePaul University, Chicago, where he spent 47 years of his academic career until he retired in 1981.

Father Comerford O’Malley was born in 1902 in Chicago, a son of Austin O’Malley (1851-1932) and his wife Alice ‘Ella’ Comerford (1863-1941).

Alice Comerford was born in Kinvara, Co Galway, on 24 March 1863, a daughter of Isaac Comerford (1829-1900) and his wife Mary Jane Linnane (1841-1914). Isaac Comerford was a younger brother of Henry Comerford (1827-1861), a prominent Galway merchant and magistrate who lived at Merchant’s Road, Galway, and Ballykeel House, Kilfenora, Co Clare. Henry bought up the Gregory estate in Kinvara in the 1850s and his post-Famine efforts to impose exorbitant rent increases in the town brought financial ruin to Kinvara and brought the Comerford family to the brink of social and economic disaster.

Alice Comerford emigrated ca 1866 with her parents and siblings to Chicago, where more brothers and sisters were born, including Judge Frank Comerford.

On 29 November 1883, Alice married Austin John O’Malley (1850-1932) from Co Mayo. They had a large family of eight children, including three doctors, three priests and a nun: Dr John Gabriel O’Malley (1888-1935), of Columbus Hospital, Chicago; Sister Mary Paulina ‘Jennie’ O’Malley (1888-1942); Dr Austin J O’Malley (1894-1954); Dr Francis Xavier O’Malley (1895-1974), whose children included Judge Paul Augustine O’Malley (1927-2006); Charles Bernard O’Malley (1898-1974) of Tallahassee, Florida; Father George A O’Malley (1899-1960), a Vincentian priest and President of Saint Vincent’s Seminary and College, Cape Girardeau, Missouri; the Very Revd Professor Comerford Joseph O’Malley (1902-1991); and Father Paul T O’Malley (1904-1980).

Three of these brothers joined the Congregation of the Mission, the Vincentian community that founded DePaul University as Saint Vincent’s College in 1898. It became DePaul University in 1907, and conferred an honorary LL.D. on Eamon de Valera in 1919, DePaul’s first honorary doctorate for an international figure.

Father Comerford Joseph O’Malley was the only member of this large family to continue the Comerford name, which was given as a first name at birth in 1902. After joining the Vincentians, he was ordained priest in 1928 and received the degree of Doctor of Sacred Theology in 1929 from the Colegio Angelico in Rome. He joined the faculty of De Paul University in 1934 as Professor of Philosophy, and two years later became the Dean of the College of Commerce (1936-1944).

He was elected the seventh President of DePaul University in 1944, and had the distinction of being the longest-serving president of the university, from 1944 to 1964.

While Comerford O’Malley was president of DePaul, the university saw tremendous growth, partly due to the GI Bill after World War II that sent many former soldiers to college. Enrolment ballooned to 11,500 by 1948.

During these years, DePaul acquired the Lewis Center and developed its Loop Campus. Father O’Malley also oversaw the building of Alumni Hall, which allowed sports to take a greater part in campus life.

But DePaul also faced some uncertainty in these years. The North Central Association, which accredits universities, recommended in 1947 that DePaul lose its accreditation, due in part to a poor library and a shortage of professors with PhDs.

DePaul, which had always seen itself as primarily a teaching and training university rather than a research university, initially balked at hiring more professors with doctorates who would then require research leave. However, these professors were soon hired, and the academic standards of the university rose. The library was also centralised and improved under one director.

Before Comerford O’Malley retired, he announced a $22 million 10-year ‘Programme for Greatness’ that would expand the Lincoln Park campus, including adding dormitories for the first time, and further improve academics.

When O’Malley began his presidency, enrolment was at about 8,000. During the beginning and middle of his tenure, it rose greatly, but when he retired there were fewer former soldiers to enrol. In 1960, enrolment was at around 9,000 students.

All of these changes have affected the current academic program and student life of DePaul to a very large degree. In a way, O’Malley’s tenure formed the modern DePaul University.

When he retired as President, Comerford O’Malley became the first Chancellor of DePaul University in 1964. He died in Saint Joseph’s Hospital, Chicago, on 27 February 1991.

Comerford O’Malley … his tenure as President formed the modern DePaul University

Frank D Comerford, Chicago judge who was expelled from the Illinois State Senate

Judge Frank D Comerford (1879-1929) … a judge in Chicago, a Democratic politician, a journalist and an author

Patrick Comerford

My ‘road trip’ this summer has brought me to a number of former Comerford family homes in Co Clare and Co Galway. One member of the Comerford family in Kinvara who achieved fame or a level of notoriety in American politics and law, Judge Frank D Comerford (1879-1929), was a judge in Illinois, a Democratic politician, a journalist and an author.

Frank D Comerford is best remembered for his expulsion from the Illinois State Senate in February 1905 for allegedly besmirching the name of the Senate at a lecture in Chicago in which he accused the Senate of corruption. In this episode, Comerford became the first elected official expelled from the Illinois legislature.

Frank D Comerford was born on 25 September 1879 in Chicago. He was the son of Isaac Comerford (1829-1900) of Kinvara, Co Galway, and his wife Mary ‘Jane’ Linnane (1841-1914).

Isaac Comerford of Kinvara was a younger brother of Henry Comerford (1827-1861), a prominent Galway merchant and magistrate who lived at Merchant’s Road, Galway, and Ballykeel House, Kilfenora, Co Clare. Henry bought up the Gregory estate in Kinvara in the 1850s and his post-Famine efforts to impose exorbitant rent increases in the town brought financial ruin to Kinvara and brought the Comerford family to the brink of social and economic disaster.

Isaac Comerford remained in Kinvara as a shopkeeper for about a decade, and married Mary Jane Linnane. Their first seven children were born in Kinvara: Henry (1858), John Henry (1859), Mary (1860), Bridget (1861), Michael (1862), Alice ‘Ella’ (1863) and George Henry (1865).

But Isaac and Mary Jane Comerford emigrated to the US around 1866, and settled in Chicago, Illinois, and five more children were born there: Elizabeth (1867), Jane (1871), Thomas Joseph (1877), Anne (1878) and Frank (1879).

Frank D Comerford studied at Northwestern University and the Illinois College of Law in Chicago. After graduation, he was admitted to the Illinois State Bar in 1904. Later that year, at the age of 24, Comerford was elected to the Illinois State Senate in November 1904 from the 2nd District, representing part of Cook County, Illinois.

Comerford was a member of the Illinois Senate for only a few weeks when he made a public speech at the Illinois College of Law in which he claimed the state senate was merely ‘a great public auction, where special privileges are sold to the highest corporation bidders.’

He made specific accusations of wrongdoing, named names, and gave dates and financial details. He tried to protect himself by saying these stories were ‘in common circulation at the Capitol.’

The Illinois legislature reacted forcefully. It quickly passed a resolution that accused Comerford of spreading ‘assertions, slanders, insinuations and incriminations’ that called into question ‘the honour and integrity of the Illinois General Assembly.’ A special committee of the Illinois House of Representatives was hastily established and took extensive testimony before deciding Comerford’s allegations were unfounded.

The report of the special committee was placed before the House on 8 February 1905, and Comerford was called before the bar to show cause as to why he should not be expelled.

Comerford waived the right to a delay for preparing his defence. Instead, he delivered an impassioned speech lasting more than an hour, in which he defended the veracity of his charges and severely criticised the investigative committee for the limitations it placed upon his testimony. A vote on Comerford’s expulsion immediately followed and the newly elected Senator was expelled by a vote of 121 to 13.

After Comerford’s expulsion, a special election was held in the 2nd Senate District to replace him. Unbowed, Comerford ran for the seat again – this time as an independent – and was re-elected. He was unsuccessful in an effort to win re-election in the 1906 campaign, however, and later accepted a position as police attorney of Chicago under the Democratic mayor, Edward Fitzsimmons Dunne.

Comerford sought the Democratic Party nomination for the US Senate in 1914. However, the party rallied around the Cook County Democratic Party boss, Roger C Sullivan, and Comerford ultimately decided not to run in the primary.

When Dunne’s administration in Chicago came to an end in January 1917, Comerford set up his own private practice as an attorney. When the US entered World War I in 1917, he tried to enlist in the military, but was rejected on medical grounds. He spent the rest of the war as a public speaker selling bonds on behalf of the Liberty Loan programme.

After World War I, Comerford travelled to London and Paris for six months in 1919. He witnessed at first hand the rapidly changing social and political situation and contributed news reports to the Chicago Tribune.

When he returned to the US, Comerford published The New World. In his book, he paid particular attention to the Bolshevik Revolution in Soviet Russia, which he condemned as a new form of minority rule. He described Lenin as a ‘practical machine politician’ and an ‘oracle-dictator’ and observed that legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government had been concentrated in a single set of hands, with no right of appeal.

Comerford was a vocal advocate of the US joining the League of Nations, noting Bolshevik opposition to the concept and charging that ‘the failure to establish a League of Nations would be a world tragedy and in its wake may come revolution.’

Comerford’s political views and legal expertise led to him being chosen as the special prosecutor in the 1920 case of William Bross Lloyd and members of the Communist Labor Party of America. The trial ran from 10 May to 2 August. Despite the best efforts of the defence attorney Clarence Darrow, Comerford secured the convictions of all the defendants, including William Bross Lloyd, millionaire heir to the Chicago Tribune fortune.

Later in 1925, Darrow defended teacher John T Scopes in the Scopes ‘Monkey’ Trial, in which he opposed the statesman and orator William Jennings Bryan.

Comerford was elected to the bench as a Superior Court judge in Chicago in June 1926.

Frank D Comerford was twice married. On 19 March 1906, he married in Saint Joseph’s Church, Berrien, Michigan, Jean Cowgill (1875-1948). They later divorced, and on 10 November 1926 in Manhattan, he married Lyela Edelman Brandeis (1880-1946), widow of a merchant from Omaha, Nebraska.

Frank Comerford complained of chest pain while visiting his brother’s home in Chicago on the afternoon of 29 August 1929. Two of his nephews, Dr Francis Xavier O’Malley (1895-1974) and Dr John Gabriel O’Malley (1888-1935), were medical doctors, and were called to the house. Neither doctor found anything obviously wrong, however, and he was not taken to hospital. At 8.55 pm, however, Comerford suffered a massive heart attack while still being attended by one of his nephews. He died five minutes later. He was 49 years old.

His widow Lyela later lived in Paolo Alto, California. She died on 30 July 1946 in Los Angeles and was buried in Omaha, Nebraska.

Seven of Frank Comerford’s siblings were born in Kinvara, Co Galway (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)