Lowenstein, Allard K. (Allard Kenneth), 1929-1980

Allard Kenneth Lowenstein (January 16, 1929 – March 14, 1980) was an American academic, author, and politician. A member of the Democratic Party, he notably served as the U.S. Representative for New York's 5th congressional district from 1969 to 1971.

Born in Newark, New Jersey, he graduated from the Horace Mann School in New York City before earning a B.A. from the University of North Carolina and an LL.B. from Yale Law School. In 1949 Lowenstein worked as a special assistant on the staff of Senator Frank Porter Graham and was a foreign policy assistant on Senator Hubert H. Humphrey's staff in 1959. He worked as a college professor and administrator at Stanford University, North Carolina State University, and City College of New York. In the 1960s Lowenstein spent time in Mississippi as part of Freedom Summer. Along with Curtis Gans in 1967, and later that fall joined by Wisconsin's Midge Miller, Lowenstein started the "Dump Johnson" movement, approaching Senators Robert F. Kennedy and, at Kennedy's suggestion, George McGovern about challenging President Johnson in the 1968 Democratic primaries. When Kennedy and McGovern both declined, Lowenstein, a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, recruited and worked for Eugene McCarthy, to whose candidacy he remained loyal, even after Kennedy's late entry into the race.

Lowenstein was elected to Congress in Long Island, New York, in 1968 but was defeated in a modified district in 1970 by New York State Senator Norman F. Lent by 9,300 votes, effectively gerrymandered out of office by the Republican-controlled state legislature. In 1971, Lowenstein became head of the Americans for Democratic Action and spearheaded the "Dump Nixon" movement. In 1972, Lowenstein ran unsuccessfully for Congress in Brooklyn against Congressman John J. Rooney, a conservative Democrat supported by the party "machine," in the Democratic primary. After Rooney's victory was challenged and the election recalled due to allegations of fraud, Rooney narrowly won the rescheduled primary, but Lowenstein continued in the race on the Liberal Party line, finishing with 28% of the vote. After an abortive 1974 U.S. Senate bid, Lowenstein unsuccessfully challenged incumbent Republican Congressman John Wydler in a largely Republican district in Long Island in 1974 and 1976.

President Jimmy Carter appointed Lowenstein as United States Representative to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and thus head of the United States delegation to the thirty-third regular annual session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1977. Lowenstein served with the rank of ambassador from August 1977 to June 1978 in the capacity of alternate United States Representative for Special Political Affairs to the United Nations. In 1978 he resigned his U.N. post to run for Congress in Manhattan's "Silk Stocking District", narrowly losing the Democratic primary to Carter Burden, who in turn lost the general election to Republican S. William Green.

On March 14, 1980, Lowenstein was shot and killed in his Manhattan office. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.