For any writer, losing a mentor is a painful moment, and such was the case when I found out that Allan Brownfeld had died on August 4, 2025, at 85 years old. Allan passed so quietly that I missed the news at the time. I fear many others did as well. I did not want his passing to go by without writing a tribute. The end of any friendship causes moments of reckoning and gratitude, but Allan in particular will be sorely missed.
I agree with this: It is how we learn that matters, and it makes life more interesting. Allan knew how to learn.
Who was Allan Brownfeld? His resume is stellar: syndicated columnist; longtime writer for the St. Croix Review; popular speaker here and abroad; expert on the Middle East; staffer for a vice president, for congressmen, and for the U.S. Senate Internal Subcommittee; editor of respected journals like The Lincoln Review and Issues. His books included Hung Up On Freedom (1969); The New Left (1978); Dossier on Douglas (1970); co-author with Jay Parker of What the Negro Can Do About Crime (1974); and co-author with J. Michael Waller of The Revolution Lobby (1984). He was a fiscal conservative and, as time passed, a social liberal.
According to the beautiful tribute his son Peter wrote for the American Council for Judaism, a group Brownfeld worked with for decades, Allan’s Jewish grandparents immigrated from Lithuania and Poland to New Jersey and New York. Hardworking and dreaming of a better life for their children, they embraced the land of the free and home of the brave, and family members like Allan thrived as he grew up in Brooklyn. Education was first and foremost.
Brownfeld attended the College of William and Mary, where he became involved in politics and journalism and wrote for the student newspaper. He eventually attended law school at his alma mater, but never practiced because his passions were the power of the written word and statecraft.
Civil rights were fiercely important to Allan, and he defended blacks and American Indians with fervor and respect. Probably my favorite quote from Allan occurred when he was still a student at William and Mary during the 1960s, when he had invited the college’s first black speaker. The college president criticized Allan’s decision by saying, “I thought you were a conservative?” Allan responded: “Racism isn’t something I want to conserve.”
Touché.
I met Allan Brownfeld quite by accident. In 1980, I travelled around the world to New Zealand, Australia, crewed on sailboats in the Indian Ocean and Red Sea, and ended up settling in the Seychelles, a communist country a thousand miles off the coast of East Africa. After teaching school, I left in 1982 after a very bad coup d’etat. When I arrived home, Jerry Van Voorhis, the rector at my boarding school, Chatham Hall, asked me to write about my trip for the alumnae magazine. He later sent my article to his friend Allan Brownfeld, who republished it in The Lincoln Review. Allan and I finally met in Washington, D.C., where he took me out to lunch and encouraged me to write for a living, proceeding to publish my first articles and encouraging me to carry on. His influence on me was enormous.
When I talked to people who knew Allan Brownfeld well, they all shared that they had respected him deeply. Many used the same words to appraise him: “loyal,” “a true intellectual,” and “a gentleman who was able to reach across the aisle because he was from a kinder, gentler age.”
Stephen Naman is the president of the Board of Directors for the American Council for Judaism (ACJ), a group whose focus is Judaism beyond nationalism through education, social connections, and religious guidance, a break with Zionism. The council was founded in 1942, and Brownfeld became involved when he was 17 years old. At one time, he even edited the council’s magazine, Issues.
As Naman explained, Brownfeld, “did not believe in Jewish nationalism. Humanity was more important, and his belief was that Jewish Nationalism was oppressive to the Palestinians.” This was the core belief of ACJ, and for decades, Brownfeld was the voice of the council. Naman described Brownfeld as a very thoughtful person who was firm in his beliefs, especially rights for all peoples.
“He was a force to be reckoned with,” said Naman.
Van Voorhis, who had been one of Allan’s roommates at William and Mary, called Brownfeld not only a writer, but a polemicist whose articles usually focused on civics, education, and love of country, race relations, and the Middle East. He said that Allan’s “first sentences were like a dagger in the heart.” He was highly effective with his words.
But aside from polemics, Allan Brownfeld also had a kind and gentle side. A father to three successful children, he was also a loving grandfather to six grandchildren, whom he spent time with, reading books with them and listening to what they had to say. Brownfeld always struck me as the type of person who befriended people from all walks of life and all ages. I agree with this: It is how we learn that matters, and it makes life more interesting. Allan knew how to learn.
Allan’s son Peter wrote in his obituary that his father was “an eternal optimist about America.” He acknowledged that we had made “grave errors — slavery, racism, treatment of Native Americans, Vietnam, Watergate — but he thought of America as a resilient nation.”
Comforting words from someone who knew what he was talking about.
Allan Brownfeld’s legacy will not only be his scholarly work, but also the mark he left on people like me.
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Tyler Scott is a freelance writer living in Blackstone, Virginia, who has been publishing her articles since the early 1980s. Her website is tylernscott.com
