Politics and the Classroom
Berkeley Law During the McCarthy Era
Documents from the Frank Newman Papers
Meeting of the UC Regents to discuss the Loyalty Oath
The 1950s saw the University of California embroiled in a series of
disputes over the Cold War clash between politics and academic freedom.
For the 1949/50 academic year the Regents announced that all faculty
members would be required to sign a written oath swearing that they were
not members of, nor sympathetic to, the Communist Party. Any faculty
member refusing to sign the Loyalty Oath would be summarily fired,
regardless of tenure status. By the end of the decade, government
agencies were asking Berkeley Law professors if their law students had
expressed unacceptable political views in classroom discussions or in
written class assignments.
A new exhibition in the Main Reading Room displays documents from these
controversies, drawn from the papers of Professor (later Dean) Frank Newman.
Berkeley Law Speaks Out
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William Prosser
“I must confess that I was rather insulted, as I
would have been if the regents had asked me to swear that I was not a
bigamist, did not beat my wife, and was not engaged in operating a house
of prostitution. But if any man in California had asked me whether I was
a communist, I would have told him no; and if an oath would keep him
happy, I would have given it to him; and I saw no reason to discriminate
against the regents merely because they were my superiors.”
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Max Radin
“The Regents do not say that they suspect any
considerable number of the Faculty of being Communists or, to use their
own tortuous phrases, of being under an oath or agreement or commitment
in conflict with their obligation not to be a Communist…. And if they
had no evidence but merely suspected, after the all too prevalent
fashion of rumor built on rumor piled up on gossip and slander, the most
nervously suspicious of them surely is not so naïve as to suppose that
the requirement of an oath which says, ‘I am not a Communist, and indeed
and indeed and indeed I am not a Communist’, will prevent his suspect
from retaining his place on the Faculty.”
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Frank Newman
“The University can hardly dictate to
prospective employers and other inquirers a list of political and
religious beliefs, attitudes, activities, and associations that ought
not be regarded as sinful. But many loyalty-security inquiries – whether
they relate to government, private employment, military service, or
other affected occupation – call for evidence of beliefs, attitudes,
activities, and associations that a university should not supply if it
aspires to be a free university.”
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More information on the Loyalty Oath Controversy