Isaacs graduated from
Columbia University in 1929, then briefly worked as a reporter for the
New York Times. He went to China in 1930 with no strong political views, but became involved with left-wing politics in Shanghai, especially through a friendship with Frank Glass, a Trotskyist from South Africa, and with
Agnes Smedley, an American journalist with Communist sympathies. He wrote
The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution (1938), about the early 1925-27 phases of the
Chinese Communist Revolution, which featured a preface by
Leon Trotsky. The book includes dramatic descriptions of the
Shanghai Massacre of 1927, in which nationalist forces killed thousands of known or suspected communists. Isaacs condemned the leadership of the
Chinese Communist Party for following the instructions of
Joseph Stalin to ally with the
Nationalist Party rather than arming the workers and pursuing a genuinely revolutionary program. He covered
World War II in Southeast Asia and China for
Newsweek Magazine. In 1953 he joined the department of political science at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In the following years he published
Scratches on our Minds: American Images of China and India,
American Jews in Israel, and
The New World of Negro Americans, among others.
Scratches on our Minds was highly influential. By reviewing the popular and scholarly literature on Asia that appeared in the United States, and by interviewing many American experts, Isaacs identified four stages of American attitudes toward China: "benevolence", dominant 1905 to 1937; "admiration" (1937–1944); "disenchantment" (1944–1949); and "hostility" (after 1949). In 1950, Isaacs was awarded a
Guggenheim Fellowship. ==Personal life==