Social Activism
As a Protestant Christian Socialist, Gide was at the center of progressive politics in France, supporting the université populaire movement in the aftermath of the Dreyfus Affair. He promoted the establishment of a School for Advanced Social Studies (Ecole superieure de sciences sociales) (1899). In addition, he served among the early faculty of the Ecole Supérieure de Journalisme de Paris. Together with the School for Social Studies, it was established in 1899 as one of three grandes écoles developing from the Collège libre de science sociales founded in 1895.
Gide supported the Union pour la Verite (League for Truth) created by philosopher Paul Desjardins in 1892 in support of the French officer Alfred Dreyfus during the political scandal, which aroused heated passions across the nation. Gide was interested in reform projects as well, such as the Alliance d'Hygiene Sociale (Social Hygiene League, created in 1905), and reported on the social economy exhibition at the Paris World's Fair in 1900.
Gide was a tireless champion of the cooperative movement: both agricultural and consumers' cooperatives during the first third of the 20th century. His book, Consumers' Co-operative Societies, which first appeared in French in 1904, and in English in 1921, is a classic in the field of co-operative economics, in the tradition of Co-operative Federalism.
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