There will be a memorial service in the Columbia Chapel on October 12, 2000 at 2 PM. 

In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the Aaron Warner Scholarship Fund at the School of General Studies at Columbia University.

Please make the check payable to Columbia University/Aaron Warner Fund

Please mail contribution to the following address:
Columbia Univeristy School of General Studies
ATTN: Bruce Rosengrant
408 Lewisohn Hall, Mail Code 4103
2970 Broadway
New York, NY 10027

Aaron W. Warner, who had retired as Director of the University Seminars on July 1, 2000, died Friday, August 25th, 2000. He was 92 years old. He had committed his long life to the rule of law, to the working class, and to democracy. As a young Harvard Law School graduate in the courthouses of Boston he defended the first students who protested the rise of Nazism and took a courageous stand against those precursors of McCarthy who accused him of being a communist. As a mature lawyer, he carried his interest over to FDR's National Labor Relations Board, where he worked tirelessly to improve the rights of workers in America. Aaron served in the U.S. Navy with the Pacific Fleet when World War II threatened the values he treasured. He returned to Columbia to study and teach labor and welfare economics, became a strong and effective Dean of Columbia's staunchly democratic School of General Studies, and for almost a quarter century, Director of the University Seminars.

Aaron was born on May 16, 1908. An accomplished pianist at an early age, he studied music on a scholarship at the Damrosch Institute, which would later come to be known as the Juilliard School of Music. In 1929 Aaron graduated from New York University; he then moved on to Harvard Law School, where he took his MA and L.L.B. in 1932 after studying Constitutional and Corporation law with such figures as Benjamin F. Wright. He practiced law in Boston from 1933 to 1937, where he garnered praise and respect for his courageous defense of Harvard students protesting the early uncontested rise of Nazism.

In 1937, Aaron was called by President Roosevelt to join the National Labor Relations Board, as its youngest regional director to date. He served in the Board's Denver office and rose rapidly to the position of Special Examiner for regions nationwide.

Remaining in the Roosevelt Administration, Aaron served as Supervising Attorney for the Railroad Retirement Board and then as Chief, Division of Field Operations, for the Office of Price Administration. In 1943, he joined the U.S. Navy and served for three years in the Pacific, where he helped to liberate the islands off the coast of Japan.

After the war, Aaron embarked on what would be a long and fruitful career in academia. In 1947 he completed the residence requirements for a Ph.D. in Economics at Columbia University and began teaching Social Control of Industry, Industrial Organization, Labor Problems, and Economic Analysis. In 1954 he completed his Ph. D. dissertation on British Trade Unionism Under a Labor Government, 1945-1951, and was immediately given tenure at Columbia as Associate Professor of Economics. He was appointed full Professor in 1961 and became chairman of the department of Economics. In 1967 he was named Joseph Buttenwieser Professor of Human Relations, and then spent a year in Geneva working with the International Labor Office.

From the time he began teaching, Aaron was a devoted servant of Columbia. In 1954 he received the Bicentennial Silver Medallion in association with Columbia University's bicentennial celebrations. Following the 1968 student unrest at Columbia, Aaron was appointed to the Special Faculty Committee on Educational Policy and Planning and also assumed the deanship of the School of General Studies. His vision and leadership contributed to the new era for Columbia, where administrators grew more alert to students and the University's relationship with the community beyond its borders grew more cordial. In May of 1969, the Transfiguration Lutheran Church honored him for his volunteer services in helping train members of the Harlem community to establish and carry out their own economic development plans.

In May of 1976, Aaron was presented with Columbia University's Owl Award for distinguished service. Upon his retirement later that year, he continued serving Columbia as Dean of the School of Continuing Education, where he helped to develop a ground-breaking vision of Continuing Education, not only for Columbia University, but for American Academia as a whole.

In that same year Aaron became Director of the University Seminars, a post he retired from in July of this year. Under his guidance, the University Seminars served as a blueprint for the development of interdisciplinary studies at Columbia and beyond. He had been secretary of the University Seminar on Labor from 1947 to 1957 and later its chairman. In 1983 he founded the Seminar on Philanthropy. In 1962 he founded the Seminar on Technology and Social Change and edited the publications of this seminar including: The Impact of Science and Technology, The Environment of Change, and Technological Innovation and Society. The last book he edited and contributed to, Commitment to Full Employment, honored his friend and colleague, William S. Vickrey, 1996 Nobel Laureate and a great enthusiast for the University Seminars. It will be published posthumously by M.E. Sharp this fall. In April 2000, he finally allowed us to award him the Frank Tannenbaum Memorial Award for distinguished scholarship and devoted service to Columbia and the University Seminar Movement.

He brought to our Seminars the passion, the dignity, the fairness, and the warmth that he brought to every other element in his life.

Aaron Warner was pre-deceased by his first wife Charlotte Rosen, who died in 1970. He is survived by his wife of 29 years, Miriam Firestone, and his daughters Abby Myerson, of Los Angeles, California, and Rachel Warner Cook, of Washington D.C., six grandchildren, and his sister, Miriam Rosen, of Maplewood, New Jersey. We want to share our sympathy and sorrow with them all.