When the Nazis came to power, the Frankfurt School had to move its Institute for Social Research from Germany. The University of Chicago and Columbia University offered them opportunity to affiliate. They chose Columbia because New York was closer to Europe (Dubiel 1981: 143). Martin Jay (1973: 287, 289) asserted that first generation Frankfurt School theorists did their most creative work in their United States (U.S.) exile, but that their “greatest impact” here came more than a decade after the Institute returned to Frankfurt. This paper will focus on the consequent development of American critical theory. The writings of Herbert Marcuse, who remained in the U.S., had major impact on the New Left in the 1960s and early 1970s (Kellner 2005; Marcuse [1969], 2005a, b). Appearing in the same period, English translations of other first generation Frankfurt School theorists disseminated their thought more broadly in the U.S. and stimulated copious English language summaries, revisions, fusions, and applications of their ideas. By the early 1970s, the social sciences and humanities offered seminars, symposia, and professional meetings sessions about the Frankfurt School. However, as Jay (1973: 289) asserted, critical theorists operated “outside the mainstream” of U.S academe, which remained the case in American critical theory during the decades after his now classic book first appeared.