The Harper’s Index was the creation of Harper’s magazine’s then-editor Lewis Lapham in 1984, and it has appeared in every issue of the magazine ever since. It has also been quoted countless times in other media. Here is some background on the index.
This year marks my 50th as a subscriber. Harper’s monthly collection of essays, fiction, humor, poetry, book reviews, and deep reporting can be had for a yearly subscription that only costs as much as a jumbo pizza. Besides the new issues, readers also get access to Harper’s archive of both the famous and obscure whose writing in the magazine goes all the way back to first edition in 1850.
Before checking out the index, however, check out Harper’s inclusion this month of 1956 testimony by Paul Robeson before the House Un-American Activities Committee, as collected in A Treacherous Secret Agent: How Literature Spoke Truth to Power During the Red Scare, by Marjorie Garber.
Paul Robeson: To whom am I talking?
Francis E. Walter: You are speaking to the chairman of this committee.
Robeson: Mr. Walter?
Walter: Yes.
Robeson: The Pennsylvania Walter?
Walter: That is right.
Robeson: Representative of the steelworkers?
Walter: That is right.
Robeson: Of the coal-mining workers and not United States Steel, by any chance? A great patriot.
Walter: That is right.
Robeson: You are the author of all the bills that are going to keep all kinds of decent people out of the country.
Walter: No, only your kind.
Robeson: Colored people like myself, from the West Indies and all kinds. And just the Teutonic Anglo-Saxon stock that you would let come in.
Walter: We are trying to make it easier to get rid of your kind, too.
Robeson: You do not want any colored people to come in?
Richard Arens: Now, I would invite your attention, if you please, to the Daily Worker of June 29, 1949, with reference to a get-together with you and Ben Davis. Do you know Ben Davis?
Robeson: One of my dearest friends, one of the finest Americans you can imagine, born of a fine family, who went to Amherst and was a great man.
Walter: The answer is yes?
Robeson: Nothing could make me prouder than to know him.
Walter: That answers the question.
Arens: Did I understand you to laud his patriotism?
Robeson: I say that he is as patriotic an American as there can be, and you gentlemen belong with the Alien and Sedition Acts, and you are the nonpatriots, and you are the un-Americans, and you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.
Walter: Just a minute. The hearing is now adjourned.
Robeson: I should think it should be.
Walter: I have endured all of this that I can.
Robeson: Can I read my statement?
Walter: No, you cannot read it. The meeting is adjourned.
Robeson: I should think it would be, and you should adjourn this forever—that is what I would say.
And now for excerpts from the Harper’s Index
Portion of people detained by ICE between October 1 and November 15, 2025, who had a prior violent criminal conviction: 1/20
Who had no prior criminal convictions: 3/4
Percentage of Americans who say that a belief in God is an important part of being “truly American”: 57
Who say that having Western European heritage is: 23
Percentage of U.S. Foreign Service officers who report lower morale since Trump’s election: 98
Portion of U.S. small-business owners who plan to hire new staff or otherwise expand this year: 1/10
Who worry that their business will not survive the year: 3/4
Percentage increase over the past year in Yelp searches in the United States for “cheap eats”: 21
For “best places to eat alone”: 150
Estimated chance that any person ever born is currently alive: 1 in 14
Percentage of Americans who, given the choice of living sometime in the past, present, or future, would choose the past: 45
The present: 40
The future: 14
