Before Clark Kerr became president of the University of California from 1958 to 1967, he was a faculty member serving on a committee to scrutinize colleagues who refused to sign California’s new loyalty oath, which included, among other points, an explicit rejection of membership in the Communist Party. After his death in 2003, The Daily Bruin reported that although Kerr had signed the oath of allegiance, “he also disagreed with this view and fought for the wing against the policy of the regents.” This is a kind interpretation, since Kerr himself in the second volume of his memoirs makes it clear that he despised Communism—”I was totally against Communism”—and only “rounded up” a small section of the unit who gave evidence to his committee that they were not members of the Communist Party.
This Echoes from the Quad article is the third in a three-part series examining how the political repression of the McCarthy era is making a comeback in higher ed today. Read part one here and part two here.
Kerr and other members of his intelligence committee actually recommended that several of his colleagues should be fired, without showing that they had done any harm or clear evidence of their membership in the Communist Party. These people were recommended to be eliminated because no one could confirm that person he wasn’t there the communist. (My mathematicians and philosopher colleagues can certainly compose poems about the struggles of trying to prove them wrong.) With white-washed histories about mathematicians like Kerr, as we see in The Daily Bruin and in some areas, it is surprising that we have a similarly limited understanding of how rank-and-file faculty members worked during this research period.
Defenders of political repression during the Red Scares pushed the need for a broader understanding of Communism. Senator Joseph McCarthy, in interview no US News & World Report in 1953, he made it clear that he was going to target the “Communists once Communist intellectuals” (emphasis added) within academia. This idea trickles down to everyday people. For example, in Pastors of Our DemocracyMarjorie Heins described how one superintendent of a higher education building told FBI agents that the “interracial crowd” that lived in the apartment reflected his “communist leanings.”
It is true that, at the height of the Red Scares, academic freedom was an idea rather than a legal right (this would not happen until the judges decided the court cases later). However, the faculty’s responses were overwhelming. Some people have information about their colleagues. However, many contribute by doing nothing at all. They did not sign petitions when they were circulated, and they did not pressure university administrators to protect their peers. They teach their classes and do research with their heads down.
Even though the number of professors who were directly investigated and subsequently fired during the Red Scares was small, this culture of fear still created a major shock in US higher education that encouraged academics to comply early and self-examine. As noted in a recent book review at this time in The New Yorkera small number of shots were “all that was needed to set off a wave of anticipatory obedience.”
When we think about higher education’s response to political pressure, many of our minds first turn to the decisions of presidents and boards. Although they may be the decision makers, they are not the only ones with power. Faculty and staff also have a role to play. This has always been the case. A recurring theme in all histories of the Red Scares era is that if the faculty had shown solidarity, with a meaningful share of faculty on campus refusing to sign things like loyalty oaths, the damage to academic freedom could have been avoided or greatly reduced.
Let’s talk about the importance of unity. Recently, top leaders at the University of California, Los Angeles, made allegations that they are cooperating with the Trump administration after receiving a proposal that the university restrict free speech and expression on campus and pay the federal government $1.2 billion. The UCLA Faculty Association and the Council of University of California Faculty Associations, along with the American Association of University Professors and other unions, sued the administration.
The judge issued the first injunction against the Trump administration, writing that the administration has used “the playbook of launching civil rights investigations at prominent universities to justify cutting off federal funding, with the goal of bringing the universities to their knees and forcing them to change their minds.” (A ProPublica again History of Higher Education (The investigation detailed how management tasked attorneys with quickly “finding” evidence to support a predetermined conclusion at UCLA.)
Last month, the Trump administration withdrew its request for that decision. Although the lawsuit is ongoing, this means that the unions are the ones who have protected academic freedom at UCLA, not the senior leadership of the institution.
Faculty unions can provide a scaffold to make it easier for faculty members to find ways to act together. But if you can’t join a union at your institution (seriously, join your union!), it may be just as important to join organizations like local chapters of the AAUP (which has already shown a willingness to fight government repression that directly contradicts their past actions during the Red Scares). The United Academics of Maryland at the University of Maryland, College Park (affiliated with the AAUP), which is not a formal bargaining organization, is still working together to win nearly $9 million for workers at risk of losing their jobs due to canceled state contracts.
I highly recommend people with (limited) tenure protection. We have seen a world where people with the most power do nothing while people in the most dangerous positions put their physical bodies on the line. What follows in the past is that Harry Keyishian—the lead plaintiff in the SCOTUS case that bears his name and ultimately asserted the faculty’s right to academic freedom—was an aspiring professor at the University of Buffalo who had barely finished writing his book when he challenged New York’s loyalty oath. His accusers include other lecturers, part-time professors and a staff member. It may seem obvious, but I’ll be clear: Tenured faculty must summon the same level of courage as an all-but-dissertation professor or an unrepentant assistant professor to fight back against attacks on academic freedom.
I know there are real dangers to fair representation. But it has always been that way. In the 1950s, people who refused loyalty oaths or stood with their targeted colleagues had to worry about being banned from work, having their passports confiscated, being followed by government agents and having their phones tapped, in addition to other surveillance tactics. The laws of the time made that fear even more justified. Title II of the Internal Security Act of 1950, the so-called Concentration Camp Act, made it legal for the president to detain those suspected of espionage or sabotage. The language of the act made it clear that holding “communist views” could make someone eligible for imprisonment: “In the United States those persons who knowingly and knowingly participate in the world Communist movement, in so participating, in effect renounce their allegiance to the United States.”
However, the potential risks to peace are even more devastating. In higher education, historians have noted how during the Red Scares faculty could remain silent to protect the “reputation” of their university, and in doing so cause irreparable damage to their community.
Yours truly, Victor S. Navasky Namingone of the best books on why people support political oppression, describes how Hollywood artists and corporations during the 1950s “accepted the illusion of inevitability and in doing so cooperated in perpetuating evil in society.” He also lamented how “trust, the things we enjoy the most, was destroyed and the opportunity for a true community was tainted by the emergence of symbolic betrayal and practical cooperation.” To put it simply, Navasky’s work recounts the shame that occurs “when a citizen submits his conscience to the government.”
Some examples of unity in action are people across the country coming together to protect their neighbors. The people of Minneapolis and its surrounding areas have found ways to come together in the midst of massive chaos and “death. [of at least two of their residents] at the hands of federal immigration agents” (we won’t know for a long time how many people have died at the hands of federal agents in this operation). Residents of Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland and other cities have found their own unique ways to resist the occupation. No matter what the federal government says, these cities, and others like them, are still trembling, but I know that there will still be an opportunity to kill. Their morals have been anointed by politicians who will call them domestic terrorists.
This work continues because solidarity and community are the main weapons against tyranny. In all the many books I’ve read in this series, historians have drawn on the ways in which the Red Scares betrayed expectations and mistrusted the norm.
What if intelligence had protected each other in the past? What if we choose to support each other now? Action can take many forms: offering guest lectures to our academic partners while protecting their communities, sending joint aid, pushing our institutional leadership to protect our international students and partners, refusing grants that force us to produce propaganda, or maybe, just maybe, considering withholding our work when our university leadership cooperates with a dictatorship. When we travel as a group, we make it less likely that one person will be targeted.
It’s scary to think about the country I was kicked out of because I wrote this column. It is very scary to think of a world where I remained silent and allowed a colleague, a student, another person to be targeted by the government. As Martin Luther King Jr. he noted in “A Letter From a Birmingham Jail,” “it’s an incredibly naive idea that there is something in the long run that will inevitably end all problems… Change takes action. Action takes courage. And, hey, a little courage is contagious.”
