Corliss Lamont (March 28, 1902 – April 26, 1995), was a humanist philosopher and civil liberties advocate. He was born in Englewood, New Jersey to Thomas W. Lamont, a Partner and later Chairman at J.P. Morgan & Co.. Lamont graduated as valedictorian of Phillips Exeter Academy in 1920, and magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1924. In 1924 he did graduate work at New College University of Oxford, while he resided with Julian Huxley. The next year Lamont matriculated at Columbia University, where he studied under John Dewey. In 1928 he became a philosophy instructor at Columbia and married Margaret Hayes Irish. He received his Ph.D. in 1932. Dr. Lamont taught at Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, and the New School for Social Research (see New School University).

Lamont's political views were socialist. During the 1930s he was sympathetic to Soviet communism, but never joined the Communist Party, and later came to reject his earlier views. In 1953 he published a pamphlet entitled Why I am not a Communist.

A leading proponent of civil rights, he served as a director of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1932 to 1954, and subsequently as chairman until his death, of the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, which successfully challenged Senator Joseph McCarthy's senate subcommittee and other government agencies. In 1965 he secured a Supreme Court ruling against censorship of incoming mail by the U.S. Postmaster General. In 1973 he discovered through Freedom of Information Act requests that the FBI had been tapping his phone, and scrutinizing his tax returns and cancelled checks for 30 years. His subsequent lawsuit showed the surveillance had no justification in law, and set precedent for other citizens' privacy rights. He also filed and won a suit against the Central Intelligence Agency for opening his mail.

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