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Ernest van den Haag was a Dutch-American sociologist, social critic, and John M. Olin Professor of Jurisprudence and Public Policy at Fordham University. He was best known for his contributions to National Review.
Ernest van den Haag was born in 1914 in a province of South Holland named The Hague which is located in the Netherlands. While Van den Haag was still young, his family moved to Italy. Van den Haag grew up in Italy, and following his education began a life in politics. In the late 1930s he was a well-known left wing activist and communist. During this time, Italy was ruled by the Mussolini fascist regime. In 1937, Van den Haag was nearly murdered by a political assassin who shot him five times. After being shot, he spent nearly three years in prison. Nearly eighteen months of those three years were spent in solitary confinement. After being released, fearing re-imprisonment, Van den Haag became somewhat of a vagabond, drifting between European countries in an attempt to evade Italy and Mussolini. In 1940, he made his way to Portugal and fled to the United States, arriving at Ellis Island, not knowing a word of English. Living now in New York with nothing, Van den Haag worked as a bus boy and sold vegetables; eventually he was able to secure admission to the University at Iowa, where a group of faculty members recognized his intellectual gifts and agreed to pay for his tuition. In 1942, Van den Haag graduated with an M.A in economics. The same year, Van den Haag met a famous political philosopher Sidney Hook. This friendship with Hook forever changed Van den Haag, converting him from being a left wing activist and communist, to the opposite end of the spectrum; Van den Haag was now a conservative. Over the years, Van den Haag took particular interest in the field of capital punishment and the death penalty. In 1975 he published his book Punishing Criminals: Concerning a Very Old and Painful Question, which developed his reputation on being one of the foremost thinkers and proponents on the death penalty. Van den Haag was considered by his colleagues to be an expert on the issue of capital punishment.
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