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In a recent posting,  Roger Sandilands took issue with the following 
statement: 
 
"Re Melvin Reder's discussion in his HOPE article of Keynes's alleged 
anti-semitism, J Barklay Rosser writes: 
 
>     The evidence on Keynes has long and quite 
>publicly been known.  I am unaware of anybody 
>seriously attempting to defend Keynes on this issue, 
>other than to note his actions to help out certain Jewish 
>scholars.  He was indeed capable not merely of making 
>lots of nasty and public anti-Semitic remarks, which he 
>did, but it even affected his interactions at the policy 
>level on occasion... " 
 
Roger Sandilands deals in particular with the negotiations at Bretton Woods. 
 There is another - and much earlier -  interesting episode in Keynes' life 
which should be made better known in order to guard against such sweping 
statements as the one just cited. This episode is Keynes' early engagement 
for the Zionist cause. 
Anand Chandavarkar, "Was Keynes Anti-Semitic?" in: Economic and Political 
Weekly, May 6, 2000, p.1622 makes the following observations in this 
context: 
(this article from which the following quotes are taken was kindly made 
available to me by Paul Streeten) 
 
"Zionist Philo-Semite 
One of the more remarkable ironies of the by now voluminous Keynesian 
scholarship is the fact that while his anti- semitism, based largely on his 
obiter dicta, has been widely noticed, Keynes's support for Zionism has been 
completely ignored both in his Collected Writings and Activities and in the 
biographies by Harrod, Skidelsky and Hession as well as in the numerous 
symposia on virtually every aspect of Keynes. It is hardly known that Keynes 
was the only non-Jewish member of a high-powered advisory committee under 
the chairmanship of Herbert Samuel which prepared the preliminary draft 
report for presentation of the Zionist case for a Jewish national home in 
Palestine, for the Peace Conference in Paris on February 23, 1919. The other 
members of the committee were Lionel Abrahams of the India Office and James 
de Rothschild. Equally remarkable is the fact that although Keynes's 
membership of this important committee is noted in the autobiography of 
Chaim Weizmann, the architect and first president of lsrael [Weizmann 
1949:243], it is not recorded in the standard histories of Jews and Zionism 
[e g, Laqueur 1972; Johnson 1987]. Keynes's acceptance of the membership of 
a highpowered Zionist committee, which prepared the ground for the Balfour 
Declaration is prima facie testimony of his sympathy for the Zionist cause, 
long before it became fashionable with the advent of institutionalised 
persecution of Jews in Germany and Austria.   ....    But it must have posed 
an acute quandary and taken a lot of intel1ectual and emotional conviction, 
for Keynes to participate in the preparation of the Zionist case, 
considering that "the fiercest opponent of the Zionist" in the British 
cabinet was none other than his prime benefactor Edwin Montagu, the 
secretary of state for India." 
 
Further down on the same page, Anand Chandavarkar comes nearer to the time 
of  J Barklay Rosser's remark but again reaches quite a different judgement: 
 
"Much later in the 1930s, at the height of the Nazi persecution of Jews. 
Keynes, formulating a positive peace programme (The New Statesman and 
Nation, March 25, 1938) said: "there should be an offer to Germany to make 
organised arrangements for all German and Austrian Jews who wish to emigrate 
and be naturalised elsewhere [CW XX VIII 1982:100]. This was a specific 
constructive proposal for Jewish relief in contrast to the equivocal stand 
of the British government on this issue. As noted by the editors of his 
Collected Writings, "Keynes was one of the most active in succouring the 
Jewish refugees." [CW  X 1972:382]. With the outbreak of the second world 
war, Keynes intervened actively with the home secretary and other concerned 
officials to obtain the release of interned Jewish refugee economists, Piero 
Sraffa, Erwin Rothbarth, Hans Singer, and Edward Rosenbaum [CW  XXII 
1976:190]" 
 
On the basis of these statements, I think one can hardly subscribe to J Barclay Rosser's
above quoted statement. Keynes did not just  "help out certain Jewish scholars" but put
considerable effort in alleviating the lot of persecuted jews in general. I think he
deserves a more generous judgement than the quoted one.
 
Gerhard Michael Ambrosi 
 
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