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No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities
Ellen Schrecker's award-winning and highly-acclaimed No Ivory Tower recounts the previously untold story of how the anti-Communist furor during the 1950's affected the nation's colleges and universities. She describes how the hundreds of professors called before the investigating committees of the McCarthy era confronted the same dilemma most other witnesses had to face, deciding whether to cooperate with the committees and name names or to refuse such cooperation and risk losing their jobs.
Drawing on previously untouched archives and dozens of personal interviews, Schrecker re-creates the climate of fear that pervaded American campuses, as the nation's educational leaders responded to the national obsession with Communism as well as their own fears about the damage that notoriety might do to the reputations of their institutions. As a result, firings occurred everywhere--at Ivy League universities, large state schools and small private colleges--and the presence of an unofficial but effective blacklist meant that most of these unfrocked professors could not find regular college teaching jobs in the U.S. until well after the McCarthyist furor had begun to subside in the 1960s.
No Ivory Tower helps to explain how the McCarthyism, which many people even then saw as a betrayal of this nation's most cherished ideals, gained so much power.
Drawing on previously untouched archives and dozens of personal interviews, Schrecker re-creates the climate of fear that pervaded American campuses, as the nation's educational leaders responded to the national obsession with Communism as well as their own fears about the damage that notoriety might do to the reputations of their institutions. As a result, firings occurred everywhere--at Ivy League universities, large state schools and small private colleges--and the presence of an unofficial but effective blacklist meant that most of these unfrocked professors could not find regular college teaching jobs in the U.S. until well after the McCarthyist furor had begun to subside in the 1960s.
No Ivory Tower helps to explain how the McCarthyism, which many people even then saw as a betrayal of this nation's most cherished ideals, gained so much power.
448 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
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404 people want to read
About the author
Ellen Schrecker
24 books23 followersEllen Wolf Schrecker is an American professor emerita of American history at Yeshiva University. She has received the Frederick Ewen Academic Freedom Fellowship at the Tamiment Library at NYU. She is known primarily for her work in the history of McCarthyism.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
February 18, 2010
Ellen Schreck has given us a vivid portrait of the dilemma many college professors faced during witch-hunts of the early fifties. She begins with an extensive history of the concept of academic freedom. No consensus has ever been reached on what exactly it is.
Usually it resulted in debate on campus in response to external threats rather than internal dissent. Leading members of the academic community wanted to control behavior which might lead to outside intervention. The 1st AAUP formulation of academic freedom in fact discouraged controversy and implored the teacher to teach all sides of an issue. Unfortunately, academic freedom meant nothing to those charged with being fellow travelers or communists. One of the great "catch-22s" of this era was that by definition anyone who denied being, a communist was by definition a communist. Simply pleading the Fifth Amendment became grounds for dismissal at many institutions, as did failure to rat on one's colleagues. Even though many academics were not ultimately charged by HUAC, simply the fact they were asked to testify became grounds enough for dismissal. It became virtually impossible to defend oneself, especially when college faculty, presidents and boards, sought to avoid any hint of controversy and found it was much easier to expel the accused than try to defend him. The vaguest hint that federal funds for research grants might be in jeopardy caused the faculty to quiver with anxiety and to throw ethics to the wind. Academic freedom was used to justify firings in many case~. The reasoning was that one could not be intellectually honest if one had had anything to do with communists. Academic freedom was defined from an institutional standpoint rather than and ideological one. Paranoid professors feared that if the academic community failed to purge itself, witch-hunts would organized from the outside. Tragically, Schreck's account shows how academia's self-enforcement of McCarthyism silenced an entire generation of radical intellectuals and stifled all opposition to the official version of the Cold War. Ironically many who suffered the most were teachers who, after becoming seriously disillusioned with communism, had abandoned the party. Many were also accused of communistic leanings for campus political ends. There are all to few examples of heroic faculty who, because of support from their colleagues and/or administration, were able to keep their jobs despite tremendous pressure.
A sad episode in the history of academic community.
Usually it resulted in debate on campus in response to external threats rather than internal dissent. Leading members of the academic community wanted to control behavior which might lead to outside intervention. The 1st AAUP formulation of academic freedom in fact discouraged controversy and implored the teacher to teach all sides of an issue. Unfortunately, academic freedom meant nothing to those charged with being fellow travelers or communists. One of the great "catch-22s" of this era was that by definition anyone who denied being, a communist was by definition a communist. Simply pleading the Fifth Amendment became grounds for dismissal at many institutions, as did failure to rat on one's colleagues. Even though many academics were not ultimately charged by HUAC, simply the fact they were asked to testify became grounds enough for dismissal. It became virtually impossible to defend oneself, especially when college faculty, presidents and boards, sought to avoid any hint of controversy and found it was much easier to expel the accused than try to defend him. The vaguest hint that federal funds for research grants might be in jeopardy caused the faculty to quiver with anxiety and to throw ethics to the wind. Academic freedom was used to justify firings in many case~. The reasoning was that one could not be intellectually honest if one had had anything to do with communists. Academic freedom was defined from an institutional standpoint rather than and ideological one. Paranoid professors feared that if the academic community failed to purge itself, witch-hunts would organized from the outside. Tragically, Schreck's account shows how academia's self-enforcement of McCarthyism silenced an entire generation of radical intellectuals and stifled all opposition to the official version of the Cold War. Ironically many who suffered the most were teachers who, after becoming seriously disillusioned with communism, had abandoned the party. Many were also accused of communistic leanings for campus political ends. There are all to few examples of heroic faculty who, because of support from their colleagues and/or administration, were able to keep their jobs despite tremendous pressure.
A sad episode in the history of academic community.
March 10, 2025
From the conclusion:
"McCarthyism also affected the institutional life of the nation’s colleges and universities. Here, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the failure to protect academic freedom eroded the academy’s moral integrity. Professors and administrators ignored the stated ideals of their calling and overrode the civil liberties of their colleagues and employees in the service of such supposedly higher values as institutional loyalty and national security. In retrospect, it is easy to accuse these people of hypocrisy, of mouthing the language of academic freedom to conceal something considerably more squalid. Opportunism and dishonesty existed, of course, but most of the men and women who participated in or condoned the firing of their controversial colleagues did so because they sincerely believed that what they were doing was in the nation’s interest. Patriotism, not expedience, sustained the academic community’s willingness to collaborate with McCarthyism. The intellectual independence so prized by American academics simply did not extend to the United States government.
The extraordinary facility with which the academic establishment accommodated itself to the demands of the state may well be the most significant aspect of the academy’s response to McCarthyism. It was the government, not some fringe group of right-wing fanatics, which initiated the movement to eliminate Communism from American life. It administered the first stage of McCarthyism, acting through the agency of investigating committees and the FBI to identify political undesirables on campus. It let the universities handle the second stage and get rid of the targeted individuals. In another era, perhaps, the academy might not have cooperated so readily, but the 1950s was the period when the nation’s colleges and universities were becoming increasingly dependent upon and responsive toward the federal government. The academic community’s collaboration with McCarthyism was part of that process. It was, in many respects, just another step in the integration of American higher education into the Cold War political system.
The academy did not fight McCarthyism. It contributed to it. The dismissals, the blacklists, and above all the almost universal acceptance of the legitimacy of what the congressional committees and other official investigators were doing conferred respectability upon the most repressive elements of the anti-Communist crusade. In its collaboration with McCarthyism, the academic community behaved just like every other major institution in American life. Such a discovery is demoralizing, for the nation’s colleges and universities have traditionally encouraged higher expectations. Here, if anywhere, there should have been a rational assessment of the nature of American Communism and a refusal to overreact to the demands for its eradication. Here, if anywhere, dissent should have found a sanctuary. Yet it did not. Instead, for almost a decade until the civil rights movement and the Vietnam war inspired a new wave of activism, there was no real challenge to political orthodoxy on the nation’s campuses. The academy’s enforcement of McCarthyism had silenced an entire generation of radical intellectuals and snuffed out all meaningful opposition to the official version of the Cold War. When, by the late fifties, the hearings and dismissals tapered off, it was not because they encountered resistance but because they were no longer necessary. All was quiet on the academic front."
April 24, 2022
In a course setting, a student mentioned how recent events involving faculty saying state regulations or bans of Critical Race Theory as a research methodology was getting often compared to McCarthyism and wanted to have a larger and more varied conversation if such parallels were true or fair. To that end, this book became a recommend reading for myself to better address such questions because there are, perhaps, some parallels, but there is also not a direct connection as some soundbites may generate.
Having established why I pursued this text, I can say it is a fine historical analysis that readily shows the cost, concerns, and impact of McCarthyism on college campuses. To the absolute credit of Schrecker as author, she readily demonstrates the impact McCarthyism had on higher education, from the few faculty who served jail time, such as Chandler Davis to the loss of collegiality and trust as faculty experience ire that their colleagues did not support or protect them. This is an important work in that it shows the movements and processes linked to the Red Scare and McCarthyism are not simple political movements nor do they only impact those with political motivations, but that they echo forth into other fields. Many works have been made of the impact that the work of the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Red Scare had on Hollywood, on popular culture, on authors, etc. To this, Shrecker makes the important addition of how such a concern eked its way into academics and created changes in the culture, politics, structures, and intent of university life. It is an important addition that, while perhaps not directly tied to current challenges, may give us things to consider when we write the history of our own current time and the challenges to academic settings and academic freedom.
Having established why I pursued this text, I can say it is a fine historical analysis that readily shows the cost, concerns, and impact of McCarthyism on college campuses. To the absolute credit of Schrecker as author, she readily demonstrates the impact McCarthyism had on higher education, from the few faculty who served jail time, such as Chandler Davis to the loss of collegiality and trust as faculty experience ire that their colleagues did not support or protect them. This is an important work in that it shows the movements and processes linked to the Red Scare and McCarthyism are not simple political movements nor do they only impact those with political motivations, but that they echo forth into other fields. Many works have been made of the impact that the work of the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Red Scare had on Hollywood, on popular culture, on authors, etc. To this, Shrecker makes the important addition of how such a concern eked its way into academics and created changes in the culture, politics, structures, and intent of university life. It is an important addition that, while perhaps not directly tied to current challenges, may give us things to consider when we write the history of our own current time and the challenges to academic settings and academic freedom.
March 27, 2023
"The universities did not try to stop McCarthyism. They contributed to it".---Ellen Schrecker
I shall never forget my amiable interrogation by the doctor at the house of correction. :"What is your highest education level?' the kindly doc asked. "I am a Doctor of Philosophy". Medicine man: "What are you doing here?" I tried to warn them, meaning all of USA. Before DeSantis. Before Trump. I told them we were in a new McCarthyite period where universities would be purged and academic dissidents expelled, banished, ostracized. No one listened. The liberals called me "crackpot" while the conservatives wanted my scalp. Ellen Schrecker, a historian of both American Communism and McCarthyism sounded the warning bell too, in this must-read book on how American universities under the spell of Truman and Eisenhower, McCarthy and Nixon, weeded out anyone to the left of Hubert Humphrey . (Who, by the way, once suggested internment camps for Communists.) My own alma mater, the University of California, instituted loyalty oaths for faculty and staff: "Are you now or have you ever been a member of...". This followed Truman's diktat of a loyalty oath for all federal employees. Professor spied and snitched on other professors while others were "outed" by students. (I used to think this sort of thing only happened in Brazil, where a local friendly warned us American exchange students of "professional students" who were really secret police spies in youthful disguise.) I had one UCLA Professor, a dear friend and colleague who survived this period tell me that "teaching DAS KAPITAL was banned, which was stupid since even if you don't agree with Marx's economics you can admire him as a student of human nature". Professors got dragged before the House un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), not officially abolished until 1975, and told to "name names" of suspected Communists, "red menaces on campus", or be fired themselves. The most horrifying find by Schrecker is that not a single university president protested these totalitarian moves on the part of the government, and indeed some encouraged them. Can it happen again? It already has. Just look at Florida and the DeSantis' purge of the New School. If there aren't many American Communists left around to excise then turn to gays, African-Americans, multiculturalists, evolutionists---the whole bag sack of non-conformists.
I shall never forget my amiable interrogation by the doctor at the house of correction. :"What is your highest education level?' the kindly doc asked. "I am a Doctor of Philosophy". Medicine man: "What are you doing here?" I tried to warn them, meaning all of USA. Before DeSantis. Before Trump. I told them we were in a new McCarthyite period where universities would be purged and academic dissidents expelled, banished, ostracized. No one listened. The liberals called me "crackpot" while the conservatives wanted my scalp. Ellen Schrecker, a historian of both American Communism and McCarthyism sounded the warning bell too, in this must-read book on how American universities under the spell of Truman and Eisenhower, McCarthy and Nixon, weeded out anyone to the left of Hubert Humphrey . (Who, by the way, once suggested internment camps for Communists.) My own alma mater, the University of California, instituted loyalty oaths for faculty and staff: "Are you now or have you ever been a member of...". This followed Truman's diktat of a loyalty oath for all federal employees. Professor spied and snitched on other professors while others were "outed" by students. (I used to think this sort of thing only happened in Brazil, where a local friendly warned us American exchange students of "professional students" who were really secret police spies in youthful disguise.) I had one UCLA Professor, a dear friend and colleague who survived this period tell me that "teaching DAS KAPITAL was banned, which was stupid since even if you don't agree with Marx's economics you can admire him as a student of human nature". Professors got dragged before the House un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), not officially abolished until 1975, and told to "name names" of suspected Communists, "red menaces on campus", or be fired themselves. The most horrifying find by Schrecker is that not a single university president protested these totalitarian moves on the part of the government, and indeed some encouraged them. Can it happen again? It already has. Just look at Florida and the DeSantis' purge of the New School. If there aren't many American Communists left around to excise then turn to gays, African-Americans, multiculturalists, evolutionists---the whole bag sack of non-conformists.
June 6, 2025
Recommended by journalist/scholar Jelani Cobb when he gave a talk at UMBC this semester, this book is relevant now because, as he put it, we don't have to look to Hitler for parallels to the current political situation in the U.S., nor for guidance as to what universities should and shouldn't do in response. Unfortunately, this book is now out of print and not as accessible as I wish it were. I did skip a couple of the early chapters so as not to hold onto it for too long when I know others want to read it too.
The important takeaway here is that too many people did not act to intervene in this travesty, sometimes out of fear for their own livelihoods, but sometimes because they at heart bought into the idea that Communists must be unfit to teach. Schrecker observes: "Like liberals everywhere, they adhered to the ideology of Cold War anti-Communism, with its emphasis on the primacy of national security over individual rights" (336).
It was also done supposedly in the name of academic freedom. As Schrecker writes, bitingly, "because there was no academic freedom in Russia, American Communists had no right to enjoy it here" (106). Some expressed opposition to this philosophy. For instance, she reports that Alexander Meiklejohn, former Amherst president, found particularly disturbing "the belief 'that suppression is more effective as an agency of freedom than is freedom itself'" (110). Others were afraid that they had to appear to be hard on Communists themselves so that outsiders (legislators, for instance) didn't come in and start firing people.
One way or another, she contends: "The academic community came to adapt itself to the suppression of dissent" (11).
But when, instead, academic leaders stood up to such outside attempts, it worked. When faculty collectively fought against loyalty oaths, especially those that singled out professors from other workers, they effectively protected those who refused compliance from "long-lasting negative effects" (124). Others were afraid of facing such persecution themselves, but "resistance to [the anti-Communist crusade] entailed far fewer risks than people imagined" (337).
The lesson for today is that collective action matters. And we must not allow ourselves to excuse the means because we think the ends are worthy. It must be done the right way, the just way, the human rights way, the rule of law way, every time, no matter how much we don't like the people or views we end up protecting that way. Expediency is suspect.
Schrecker organizes the book by categories, sometimes chronologically, but more often focusing on one type of location or type of actors. Consequently, the book feels cyclical, as though circling through the same moments in time but in different rooms.
Here are the rest of my favorite/most important points from this book:
"McCarthy received the tacit support of the more respectable leaders of the Republican party, who welcomed the damage that their disreputable colleague was inflicting on the incumbent Democrats" (8).
"The task, then, was to show how membership in the Communist Party disqualified someone from academic life. . . . It was assumed that the academic Communist had not only committed himself to the furtherance of undemocratic goals by illegal means, but that he had also surrendered his intellectual freedom. . . . The academic anti-Communists [fixed] upon . . . the seemingly conspiratorial nature of the Communist Party . . . as perhaps the most important disqualification of an academic Communist. More serious charges like indoctrination and espionage . . . did surface on occasion, but they were usually presented as potential dangers rather than real ones, no actual cases of atomic spies or classroom ideologues having ever been found" (105-106).
"Once the anti-Communist consensus and the machinery for enforcing it was in place, it was to become all too easy for academic institutions to turn against other types of political undesirables" (125).
"Harvard was an obvious target. Its prestige ensured publicity" (194). Likewise, its prestige made more impactful the precedent it set by not firing faculty investigated by Congress.
"In one way or another the FBI had a hand in many of the cases with which we are concerned" (253)The Freedom of Information Act has . . . revealed the FBI's obsession with covering its own tracks. . . . The FBI created paper trails to conceal its leaks. . . . In [multiple] situations, an agent, during the course of hand-delivering a letter refusing to cooperate . . . also handed over the files [the university] wanted" for its internal investigations of faculty's political opinions (276).
"Had there been any *meaningful* opposition to McCarthyism within the academic community, people like Chandler Davis, M.I. Finley, and Frank Oppenheimer could have found teaching jobs in the U.S. They didn't" (282).
"In 1951, after the passage of the McCarran Act, the State Department began to withhold passports from political dissidents and confiscate those of people who were already abroad" (296).
"It is something--perhaps it is a great deal--to observe that one can stand one's ground against the enemies of culture, and thus help to defeat them. One knows then that one's life has been useful, and that therefore one has not lived in vain. . . . What I did, what I morally had to do, was painful and perilous, but, beyond all that, it was a privilege" (Barrows Dunham, quoted on page 305).
"At many schools local AAUP members refrained from speaking out only because they believed the central office had already entered the case" (318).
The important takeaway here is that too many people did not act to intervene in this travesty, sometimes out of fear for their own livelihoods, but sometimes because they at heart bought into the idea that Communists must be unfit to teach. Schrecker observes: "Like liberals everywhere, they adhered to the ideology of Cold War anti-Communism, with its emphasis on the primacy of national security over individual rights" (336).
It was also done supposedly in the name of academic freedom. As Schrecker writes, bitingly, "because there was no academic freedom in Russia, American Communists had no right to enjoy it here" (106). Some expressed opposition to this philosophy. For instance, she reports that Alexander Meiklejohn, former Amherst president, found particularly disturbing "the belief 'that suppression is more effective as an agency of freedom than is freedom itself'" (110). Others were afraid that they had to appear to be hard on Communists themselves so that outsiders (legislators, for instance) didn't come in and start firing people.
One way or another, she contends: "The academic community came to adapt itself to the suppression of dissent" (11).
But when, instead, academic leaders stood up to such outside attempts, it worked. When faculty collectively fought against loyalty oaths, especially those that singled out professors from other workers, they effectively protected those who refused compliance from "long-lasting negative effects" (124). Others were afraid of facing such persecution themselves, but "resistance to [the anti-Communist crusade] entailed far fewer risks than people imagined" (337).
The lesson for today is that collective action matters. And we must not allow ourselves to excuse the means because we think the ends are worthy. It must be done the right way, the just way, the human rights way, the rule of law way, every time, no matter how much we don't like the people or views we end up protecting that way. Expediency is suspect.
Schrecker organizes the book by categories, sometimes chronologically, but more often focusing on one type of location or type of actors. Consequently, the book feels cyclical, as though circling through the same moments in time but in different rooms.
Here are the rest of my favorite/most important points from this book:
"McCarthy received the tacit support of the more respectable leaders of the Republican party, who welcomed the damage that their disreputable colleague was inflicting on the incumbent Democrats" (8).
"The task, then, was to show how membership in the Communist Party disqualified someone from academic life. . . . It was assumed that the academic Communist had not only committed himself to the furtherance of undemocratic goals by illegal means, but that he had also surrendered his intellectual freedom. . . . The academic anti-Communists [fixed] upon . . . the seemingly conspiratorial nature of the Communist Party . . . as perhaps the most important disqualification of an academic Communist. More serious charges like indoctrination and espionage . . . did surface on occasion, but they were usually presented as potential dangers rather than real ones, no actual cases of atomic spies or classroom ideologues having ever been found" (105-106).
"Once the anti-Communist consensus and the machinery for enforcing it was in place, it was to become all too easy for academic institutions to turn against other types of political undesirables" (125).
"Harvard was an obvious target. Its prestige ensured publicity" (194). Likewise, its prestige made more impactful the precedent it set by not firing faculty investigated by Congress.
"In one way or another the FBI had a hand in many of the cases with which we are concerned" (253)The Freedom of Information Act has . . . revealed the FBI's obsession with covering its own tracks. . . . The FBI created paper trails to conceal its leaks. . . . In [multiple] situations, an agent, during the course of hand-delivering a letter refusing to cooperate . . . also handed over the files [the university] wanted" for its internal investigations of faculty's political opinions (276).
"Had there been any *meaningful* opposition to McCarthyism within the academic community, people like Chandler Davis, M.I. Finley, and Frank Oppenheimer could have found teaching jobs in the U.S. They didn't" (282).
"In 1951, after the passage of the McCarran Act, the State Department began to withhold passports from political dissidents and confiscate those of people who were already abroad" (296).
"It is something--perhaps it is a great deal--to observe that one can stand one's ground against the enemies of culture, and thus help to defeat them. One knows then that one's life has been useful, and that therefore one has not lived in vain. . . . What I did, what I morally had to do, was painful and perilous, but, beyond all that, it was a privilege" (Barrows Dunham, quoted on page 305).
"At many schools local AAUP members refrained from speaking out only because they believed the central office had already entered the case" (318).
June 23, 2024
Un ouvrage qui brosse le portrait du milieu universitaire américain face à la répression anticommuniste des années 1950. Outre son travail de recherche de professeurs renvoyés et/ou interrogés sur leurs opinions politiques, Ellen Schrecker apporte de réelles avancées à ce champ historiographique. Elle date cette répression des intellectuels à avant la guerre froide et explore les différents aspects de celle-ci, notamment les mécanismes des auditions et les arguments utilisés.
November 21, 2024
New York Times story, 21 Nov 2024:
Republicans Are Targeting Social Sciences to Curb Ideas They Don’t Like
Conservatives in Florida have moved to uproot liberal “indoctrination” in higher education by removing classes like Sociology from core requirements.
Republicans Are Targeting Social Sciences to Curb Ideas They Don’t Like
Conservatives in Florida have moved to uproot liberal “indoctrination” in higher education by removing classes like Sociology from core requirements.
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June 27, 2021love too be in a profession completely tainted by anti-radicalism
February 5, 2009
Ellen Schreck in has given us a vivid portrait of the dilemma many college professors faced during witch-hunts of the early fifties. She begins with an extensive history of the concept of academic freedom. No consensus has ever been reached on what exactly it is. Usually it resulted in debate on campus in response to external threats rather than internal dissent. Leading members of the academic community wanted to control behavior which might lead to outside intervention. The 1st AAUP formulation of academic freedom in fact discouraged controversy and implored the teacher to teach all sides of an issue. Unfortunately, academic freedom meant nothing to those charged with being fellow travelers or communists. One of the great "catch-22s" of this era was that by definition anyone who denied being a communist was by definition a communist. Simply pleading the fifth amendment became grounds for dismissal at many institutions, as did failure to rat on one's colleagues.
Even though many academics were not ultimately charged by BUAC simply the fact they were asked to testify became .grounds enough for dismissal. It became virtually impossible to defend oneself, especially when college faculty, presidents and boards, sought to avoid any hint of controversy and found it was much easier to expel the accused than try to defend him. The vaguest hint that federal funds for research grants might be in jeopardy caused the faculty to quiver with anxiety and to throw ethics to the wind. Academic freedom was used to justify firings in many case.. The reasoning was that one could not be intellectually honest if one had had anything to do with communists. Academic freedom was defined from an institutional standpoint rather than and ideological one. Paranoid professors feared that if the academic community failed to purge itself, witch-hunts would organized from the outside.
Tragically, Schreck's account shows how academia's self-enforcement of McCarthyism silenced an entire generation of radical intellectuals and stifled all opposition to the official version of the Cold War. Ironically many who suffered the most were teachers who, after becoming seriously disillusioned with communism, had abandoned the party.
Many were also accused of communistic leanings for campus political ends. There are all to few examples of heroic faculty who, because of support from their colleagues and/or administration, were able to keep their jobs despite tremendous pressure. A sad episode in the history of academic community.
Even though many academics were not ultimately charged by BUAC simply the fact they were asked to testify became .grounds enough for dismissal. It became virtually impossible to defend oneself, especially when college faculty, presidents and boards, sought to avoid any hint of controversy and found it was much easier to expel the accused than try to defend him. The vaguest hint that federal funds for research grants might be in jeopardy caused the faculty to quiver with anxiety and to throw ethics to the wind. Academic freedom was used to justify firings in many case.. The reasoning was that one could not be intellectually honest if one had had anything to do with communists. Academic freedom was defined from an institutional standpoint rather than and ideological one. Paranoid professors feared that if the academic community failed to purge itself, witch-hunts would organized from the outside.
Tragically, Schreck's account shows how academia's self-enforcement of McCarthyism silenced an entire generation of radical intellectuals and stifled all opposition to the official version of the Cold War. Ironically many who suffered the most were teachers who, after becoming seriously disillusioned with communism, had abandoned the party.
Many were also accused of communistic leanings for campus political ends. There are all to few examples of heroic faculty who, because of support from their colleagues and/or administration, were able to keep their jobs despite tremendous pressure. A sad episode in the history of academic community.
March 3, 2008
interesting, but one chapter, "'A Very Difficult Time of It': The Academic Blacklist in Operation."
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