As a young man, in 1964 and early 1965, Ewen was a field secretary for the civil rights organization the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). After working as a volunteer in the Freedom HouseinColumbus, Mississippi, he became part of the SNCC staff, earning the standard pay of $9.66 per week. After working in Columbus, he and Isaac Coleman, who was the project director, opened up a new field office in Tupelo, Mississippi. In 1966, Ewen was one of the founding editors of an early underground newspaper, Connections, in Madison, Wisconsin, where he was a student.[2]
In 1989, his book All Consuming Images provided the basis for Bill Moyers' four-part award-winning series, "The Public Mind." In 2004, another of his books, PR! A Social History of Spin, was the foundation of a four-part BBC series, "The Century of the Self," produced by Adam Curtis. "PR!" also provided the foundation for the 2018 French documentary, "Propaganda: La fabrique du consentement," directed by Jimmy Leipold and produced by Arte Television and INAfr. It was also the foundation of a 2020 Russian television documentary, "Стюарт Юэн. PR: как создается правда?"
Ewen has become a spokesman against violations of academic freedom in the period since 9/11, and is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Frederic Ewen Academic Freedom Center at NYU, which is named after his great uncle, a professor at Brooklyn College who was forced to resign after refusing to testify before HUAC.[3]
He was married to Elizabeth Ewen (1943-2012), a Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of American Studies at the State University of New York at Old Westbury. He has two sons, Paul Ewen and Sam Ewen, both of New York, and two grandchildren. Sam Ewen is currently a lecturer at Hunter College, Teaching media studies.
^Stuart Ewen,"Memoirs of a Commodity Fetishist, in Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture, 25th Anniversary Edition. New York: Basic Books, 2001.
^About Frederic Ewen," NYU Libraries: Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Archives website. Accessed Dec. 12, 2013.
"The Stay Free Interview" Part I Stuart Ewen talks with Stay Free magazine about his history of hype, the public relations industry, saving the planet, etc.
"Stereotype and Society" Informative, sometimes humorous website expanding on issues raised in Ewen and Ewen's Typecasting, On the Arts and Sciences of Human Inequality.