However, Woodrow Wilson's World War I speeches gave him a desire to travel and get a government job.
[1] In 1930, Malin joined the economics faculty at Swarthmore College, where he would remain for twenty years until taking the job with the ACLU.
[1] In September 1940, he was dispatched by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to issue visas to the Jewish refugees of the S.S. Quanza when it stopped in Norfolk, Virginia to refuel.
[2][3] Malin had been an ACLU member since the Twenties, but had not thought of working for the organization until shortly before he was selected to succeed Baldwin.
[1] Malin oversaw a tremendous increase in the ACLU's membership, and established its present-day chapter structure, but faced criticism from those who said that the organization had not aggressively confronted Joseph McCarthy.