Jerome Klein was an American art historian and art critic.

Klein began his career as an instruction in art history at Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 in the late 1920s , the only member of the department interested in modern art. In 1933 Klein signed a letter protesting the decision of the university to invite Hans Luther

Hans Luther

Hans Luther was a German politician and Chancellor of Germany.-Biography:Born in Berlin, Luther started in politics in 1907 by becoming the town councillor in Magdeburg. He continued on becoming secretary of the German Städtetag in 1913 and then mayor of Essen in 1918...

, the Ambassador from Nazi Germany, to speak at Columbia. Although other professors also signed the letter, Klein’s return address left on one of the letters by a careless student opponent of fascism identified Klein as the ringleader. According to Stephen H. Norwood

Stephen H. Norwood

Stephen H. Norwood is a professor of history at the University of Oklahoma. He received his PhD at Columbia University in 1984.Norwood's 2009 book The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower: Complicity and Conflict on American Campuses, drew attention even before publication...

, Columbia University President Nicholas Murray Butler, an admirer of Italian and German fascism

Fascism

Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...

, fired Klein for signing the letter.

Klein became the art critic for the New York Post

New York Post

The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...

, writing also for other publications. He was a champion of the socialist artists of the 1930s, calling for a “broad, unified social-artistic engineering which would transform man’s environment for the benefit of man.”

In 1935 Klein was a founding member of the American Artists' Congress

American Artists' Congress

The American Artists’ Congress was an organization founded in February 1936 as part of the popular front of the Communist Party USA as a vehicle for uniting graphic artists in projects helping to combat the spread of fascism...

, organized in response to the call of the Popular Front and the American Communist Party for formations of literary and artistic groups against the spread of Fascism. His image can be seen in the wonderful drawing of the congress organizers by Peppino Mangravite