 He joined the Unemployed Teachers Association, which filed a lawsuit that resulted in 3,500 teachers, including Adler, being elevated from substitute to regular status in one day.In the course of Adler's activities in the student peace movement of the 1930s, he met Ruth Relis, a Barnard College student whom he married when she graduated in 1935.Irving and Ruth Adler had two children, Stephen and Peggy.