Quick Facts
Biography
Donald Barr (August 8, 1921 – February 5, 2004) was an Office of Strategic Services (OSS) agent, an American educator, and a writer. He taught English at Columbia University, was headmaster at the Dalton School in New York City (1964–74) and the Hackley School in Tarrytown, New York, and wrote two science fiction novels.
Personal life
Barr was born in Manhattan, New York, the son of Estelle (née DeYoung), a psychologist, and Pelham Barr, an economist. He and his wife, Mary Margaret (née Ahern), had four children including William P. Barr (who served as the 77th U.S. Attorney General in the George H. W. Bush Administration and currently serves as the 85th U.S. Attorney General in the Donald Trump Administration) and particle physicist Stephen Barr.
Barr was born to a Jewish family, but later converted to Catholicism.
Career
Barr served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II. He was teaching English at Columbia in 1955. He initiated the Columbia University Science Honors Program in 1958 and was its director until 1964.
Donald Barr was headmaster of the elite Dalton School from 1964 to 1974.During his time as Dalton's headmaster, Barr is alleged to have had a role in hiring Jeffrey Epstein as a math teacher despite Epstein having dropped out of college and being only 21 years old at the time. In 1973, Donald Barr published Space Relations, a science-fiction novel about a planet ruled by oligarchs who perform child sex slavery; It has been noted that Epstein's crimes are similar to the plot of Barr's novel.
Barr worked as an educator in and around New York City from the 1950s to 1980s and reviewed books for The New York Times.
In 1983 President Reagan nominated Donald Barr to be a member of the National Council on Educational Research.
Selected works
- The How and Why Wonder Book of Atomic Energy (1961)
- Who Pushed Humpty Dumpty? Dilemmas in American Education (1971)
- Space Relations: A Slightly Gothic Interplanetary Tale (1973)
- A Planet in Arms (1981)