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Max Harway papers, C0120, Special Collections Research Center, George Mason University Libraries.
Collection donated by Max Harway in 2007.
Processed by Special Collections Research Center staff. EAD markup completed by Eron Ackerman and Jordan Patty in August 2009. Updated and revised by Amy Blake in September 2018.
Maxwell Harway has had a long and varied career, which includes years working for the U.S. State Department, as an economist with the Department of Labor, and ultimately, as an adjunct history professor at George Mason University. Born in 1913, Harway grew up as a second-generation American son of White Russian immigrants on Manhattan's Lower East Side. He graduated from the prestigious Townsend Harris Hall high school in 1930. Among his classmates were Jonas Salk, inventor of the polio vaccine, actor Cornel Wilde, and author Herman Wouk.
After graduating from the City College of New York, Harway worked for the Works Progress Administration while presiding over a chapter of the American Federation of Teachers. In Washington in 1941, he became a chief economist for the federal Office of Price Administration, overseeing the rationing of sugar, coffee and other foodstuffs. He later spent 3 1/2 years in the U.S. Army Air Force, joined the State Department, and helped repair Europe's railroad and canal barge network under the Marshall Plan. In 1952 Harway received a master's degree in international relations from Georgetown University.
While applying for a faculty position at the University of Maryland in the 1950s, Harway encountered job discrimination as a Jew. He recalls the department head complementing his credentials but turning him down with the explanation, "I'm so sorry, we already have one Hebrew on the faculty."
Harway then entered a private minerals import-export business while living in Casablanca. In 1963, President Lyndon Johnson called on him to be a consultant in his War on Poverty, at a salary of $1 a year. A second State Department tour took Harway to Vietnam and Cambodia from 1965 to 1978, after which he moved to Warrenton. In recognition of Harway's accomplishments, especially his part in rebuilding Europe's transportation network after World War II, Clark University awarded him an honorary doctor of laws degree in 1996.
Harway later became president of the Fauquier Historical Society and turned to the county's history by writing articles, taking active roles in the Society, obtaining contributions so that Warrenton's Old Jail Museum could be open six days a week, and spearheading the celebration in August 2000 of the 175th anniversary of the Marquis de Lafayette's visit to Fauquier. In 2005, he began teaching modern U.S. and European history at George Mason University.
This collection contains materials pertaining to the long and varied career of Max Harway, including reports and memoranda, newsclippings, business cards, and magazine articles. Items from earlier in his career include United States Department of State papers and reports from Harway's work as an economist with the Office of Price Administration's Division of Food Rationing during and after World War II. Items from later in his career include papers of the Fauquier Historical Society, of which Harway served as president, campaign ads to elect Harway to Warrenton Town Council, op-eds to various newspapers, and articles by Harway on the Middle East and China.
Organized by subject and date.
Special Collections Research Center also holds other collections of personal papers on both national and Northern Virginia politics.