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The Case for Cleaning House: Sidney Hook and the Ethics of Academic Freedom during the McCarthy Era

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 July 2017

Julian Nemeth
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Abstract

Sidney Hook set the terms of debate on Communism, higher education, and academic freedom in the postwar United States. His view that Communists lacked the independence necessary for teaching and research—a view forged in the heated debates of New York City's radical left in the 1930s—provided the rationale for firing Communist professors across the country in the late 1940s and 1950s. Relying on close readings of underutilized archival sources, this article explores the development of Hook's thinking, charts his impact on key players in the period's higher education establishment (such as philosopher John Dewey and the American Association of University Professors), and outlines the way his writings helped lead to faculty dismissals at the University of Washington and New York University. The article also highlights the work of students and professors who challenged Hook's anti-Communist position, revealing a rich and often neglected mid-century discourse on academic freedom.

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Articles
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History of Education Quarterly , Volume 57 , Issue 3 , August 2017 , pp. 399 - 426
Copyright
Copyright © History of Education Society 2017 

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References

1 The best account of the Cold War Red Scare in American higher education remains Schrecker, Ellen, No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984)Google Scholar. See also, Heins, Marjorie, Priests of Our Democracy: The Supreme Court, Academic Freedom, and the Anti-Communist Purge (New York: NYU Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the American South, see Williamson-Lott, Joy Ann, “The Battle over Power, Control, and Academic Freedom at Southern Institutions of Higher Education, 1955–1965,” Journal of Southern History 79, no. 4 (Nov. 2013), 879–920 Google Scholar.

2 William R. Conklin, “Eisenhower Says Farewell to Columbia University,” New York Times, Jan. 17, 1953, 1, 6.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid. For Hook's favorable citation of this Eisenhower quotation, see Hook, Sidney, Heresy, Yes—Conspiracy, No (New York: John Day Company, 1953), 228 Google Scholar; and “Unworkable Formulae,” Time, March 16, 1953, 69.

5 Schrecker, No Ivory Tower, 9–10. Schrecker admits that “exact numbers are hard to come by” but thinks this is a conservative estimate because university officials sometimes quietly asked faculty to leave to avoid publicity.

6 On the development of the AAUP's “1940 Statement” and the institutionalization of academic freedom in the twentieth century United States, see Cain, Timothy Reese, Establishing Academic Freedom: Politics, Principles, and the Development of Core Values (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Metzger, Walter P., “The 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure,” Law and Contemporary Problems, 53, no. 3 (Summer 1990), 3–77 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 American Association of University Professors, “Academic Freedom and Tenure, Statement of Principles, 1940,” Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors 27 (Feb. 1941), 41 Google Scholar.

8 Schrecker, No Ivory Tower, 315–37.

9 For useful context on the politics of American higher education during the postwar era, see Loss, Christopher P., Between Citizens and the State: The Politics of American Higher Education in the 20th Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 91–163 Google Scholar; Lowen, Rebecca S., Creating the Cold War University: The Transformation of Stanford (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997)Google Scholar; and Geiger, Roger L., Research & Relevant Knowledge: American Research Universities Since World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 30–61 Google Scholar.

10 For a small sampling of Hook's contributions to the Cold War debate on academic freedom, see Hook, Sidney, “Academic Integrity and Academic Freedom: How to Deal with the Fellow-Traveling Professor,” Commentary 8 (Oct. 1, 1949), 329–339 Google Scholar; Hook, “Should Communists Be Permitted to Teach?” New York Times Magazine, Feb. 27, 1949, 7, 22–28; Hook, “Communists and the Colleges,” New Leader, May 6, 1950, 6–18; Hook, Heresy, Yes.

11 Sidney Hook, “The Strategy of Truth,” New Leader, Feb. 13, 1956, 21.

12 Sidney Hook, “Academic Integrity and Academic Freedom,” 335.

13 On the concept of “back channels” in education and intellectual history, I am indebted to L. D. Burnett. See her “Back to the Well: The Backchannel,” U.S. Intellectual History Blog, March 11, 2017, http://s-usih.org/2017/03/back-to-the-well-the-backchannel.html.

14 On academic Communists in New York City during the 1930s, see Taylor, Clarence, Reds at the Blackboard: Communism, Civil Rights, and the New York City Teachers Union (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Heins, Priests of Our Democracy, 31–51; and Schrecker, No Ivory Tower, 24–53. For broader context on debates within the American left over Stalinism during the 1930s, see Kutulas, Judy, The Long War: The Intellectual People's Front and Anti-Stalinism, 1930–1940 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

15 See Friedman, Murray, The Neoconservative Revolution, Jewish Intellectuals and the Shaping of Public Policy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 68–78 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 John E. Connor, “Partisans,” The Commonweal, March 20, 1953, 609.

17 On Hook's experiences growing up in Brooklyn, see his autobiography, Out of Step: An Unquiet Life in the 20th Century (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 1–38 Google Scholar.

18 Postel, Danny, “Sidney Hook, an Intellectual Street Fighter, Reconsidered,” Chronicle of Higher Education 49, no. 11 (Nov. 8, 2002), A18 Google Scholar.

19 Hook, Out of Step, 116.

20 League of Professional Groups for Foster and Ford, “Culture and the Crisis: An Open Letter to the Writers, Artists, Teachers, Physicians, Engineers, Scientists and Other Professional Workers of America” (New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1932), 31.

21 Hook, Sidney, Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx: A Revolutionary Interpretation (New York: John Day Co., 1933)Google Scholar. For Hook's early career as a revolutionary Marxist, see Phelps, Christopher, Young Sidney Hook: Marxist and Pragmatist (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

22 Phelps, Christopher, “Flexibility and Revolution,” in Sidney Hook Reconsidered, ed. Cotter, Matthew J. (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2004), 178 Google Scholar.

23 Hook, Out of Step, 158–65; and Phelps, Young Sidney Hook, 84–90.

24 “Harry Martel Describes Professor Sidney Hook as a ‘Slimy Revolutionary Reptile,’” Washington Square Bulletin, Feb. 15, 1935, 1. The Washington Square Bulletin, later the Square Bulletin, is available on microfilm at the New York University Archives in the Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York University, New York, NY.

25 On Hook's break with the Communist movement, see Phelps, Young Sidney Hook, 84–90.

26 Ibid., 105–23.

27 Sidney Hook to Chancellor Chase, Jan. 3, 1935, Sidney Hook Papers, box 163, folder 5, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford, CA, hereafter Hook Papers.

28 Ernest Nagel to Sidney Hook, Dec. 19, 1934, Hook Papers, box 22, folder 8.

29 Sidney Hook to Alan Wald, Feb. 4, 1985, Hook Papers, box 29, folder 48.

30 Hook, Out of Step, 225–36.

31 Ibid.

32 Jumonville, Neil, Critical Crossings: The New York Intellectuals in Postwar America (Berkley: University of California Press, 1991), 24 Google Scholar.

33 Hook, Out of Step, 218.

34 Harris, Sarah Miller, The CIA and the Congress for Cultural Freedom in the Early Cold War (New York: Routledge, 2016), 35–36 Google Scholar.

35 For nuanced analyses of American Communists’ response to the Nazi-Soviet Pact, see Cohen, Robert, When the Old Left Was Young: Student Radicals and America's First Mass Student Movement, 1929–1941 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 279–83Google Scholar; and Schrecker, No Ivory Tower, 54–57.

36 Sidney Hook, “Unreconstructed Fellow Travelers,” The Call, Jan. 13, 1940, 2.

37 Ibid.

38 Ibid.

39 Sidney Hook to Daniel J. Bronstein, Nov. 29, 1948, Hook Papers, box 132, folder 9.

40 Sidney Hook to ACLU Executive Director Roger Baldwin, Nov. 14, 1940, American Civil Liberties Union Papers, subgroup 1, The Roger Baldwin Years, reel 179, volume 2154, series 18, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton, NJ, hereafter ACLU Papers.

41 For anti-Communism within the ACLU during the 1939–1941 period, see Kutulas, Judy, The American Civil Liberties Union and the Making of Modern Liberalism, 1930–1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 64–88 Google Scholar.

42 Corliss Lamont to Roger Baldwin, March 27, 1942, ACLU Papers, reel 203, volume 2357, series 18.

43 Corliss Lamont to Sidney Hook, May 27, 1941, Hook Papers, box 18, folder 31.

44 Ibid.

45 Corliss Lamont to Sidney Hook, March 19, 1942, Hook Papers, box 18, folder 31.

46 Sidney Hook to Roger Baldwin, March 24, 1942, Hook Papers, box 111, folder 1. Hook would later refer to Lamont as the “most notorious fellow traveler in the United States.” Sidney Hook to Nicolas Nabokov, April 20, 1956, Hook Papers, box 124, folder 5.

47 For an excellent contemporary overview of the University of Washington academic freedom cases, which includes perspectives from the faculty in question, administrators, and scholars, see “American Scholar Forum: Communism and Academic Freedom,” American Scholar 18, no. 3 (Summer 1949), 323–58Google Scholar. See also, Sanders, Jane, Cold War on the Campus: Academic Freedom at the University of Washington, 1946–1964 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1979)Google Scholar. During the same year, Hook also pressured academics to boycott a Soviet-sponsored “Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace.” On the significance of that campaign, see Saunders, Frances Stonor, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (New York: New Press, 1999), 45–57 Google Scholar.

48 Allen, Raymond, “Statement by the President and the Dismissed Professors,” American Scholar 18, no. 3 (Summer 1949), 326–28Google Scholar.

49 Sidney Hook to Donald K. Anderson, Feb. 23, 1949, Hook Papers, box 121, folder 4.

50 Hook, “Should Communists Be Permitted to Teach?”

51 For a useful introduction to Hook's theory of democracy and its relation to pragmatism, see “Editors’ Introduction: The Legacy of Sidney Hook,” in Sidney Hook on Pragmatism, Democracy, and Freedom, ed. Talisse, Robert B. and Tempio, Robert (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2002), 11–21 Google Scholar.

52 Hook, Sidney, Reason, Social Myths, and Democracy (New York: John Day, 1940), 296 Google Scholar.

53 Hook, “Should Communists Be Permitted to Teach?,” 22.

54 In his New York Times Magazine piece, Hook says that fellow travelers are a concern but that they can be dealt with “various sanctions short of dismissal,” 28. For the “typhus Marys” quote, see Sidney Hook, “Academic Integrity and Academic Freedom,” 330.

55 Hook, “Should Communists Be Permitted to Teach?,” 26.

56 Alexander Meiklejohn, “Should Communists Be Allowed to Teach?,” New York Times Magazine, March 27, 1949, 10, 64–66; and Lynd, Helen, “Truth at the University of Washington,” American Scholar 18, no. 3 (Summer 1949), 346–53Google Scholar.

57 Hook, Heresy, Yes, 229.

58 Ibid., 222.

59 See University of Washington President Raymond Allen's reference to Hook's New York Times Magazine article in “Statement by the President,” American Scholar 18, no. 3 (Summer 1949), 327 Google Scholar.

60 Hook discusses the publishing history of the article in a letter to John Dewey. Sidney Hook to John Dewey, June 27, 1949, Hook Papers, box 175, folder 1.

61 “Violators and Sympathizers,” Time, March 7, 1949, 48.

62 Sidney Hook to John Dewey, June 27, 1949, Hook Papers, box 175, folder 1.

63 Edward Purcell makes a similar observation about pragmatism at the conclusion of his classic work, The Crisis of Democratic Theory: Scientific Naturalism and the Problem of Value (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1973), 267–73Google Scholar. See also, Hartman, Andrew, Education and the Cold War: The Battle for the American School (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 74–80 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Westbrook, Robert Brett, John Dewey and American Democracy (New York: Cornell University Press, 1991), 545–46Google Scholar. On Dewey's attack on Communists in New York City's Teachers’ Union in the 1930s (which helps explain his openness to Hook's arguments in the 1950s), see Feffer, Andrew, “The Presence of Democracy: Deweyan Exceptionalism and Communist Teachers in the 1930s,” Journal of the History of Ideas 66, no. 1 (Jan. 2005), 79–97 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64 John Dewey, Letters to the Times, “Communists as Teachers: Professor Dewey Expresses His Fear Regarding Proposed Prohibition,” New York Times, June 21, 1949, 24.

65 Ibid.

66 Dewey had co-edited a collection of essays protesting the injustice of the Bertrand Russell case. Hook had also defended Russell on academic freedom grounds. See Dewey, John and Kallen, Horace Meyer, eds., The Bertrand Russell Case (New York: Viking Press, 1941)Google Scholar; and Weidlich, Thom, Appointment Denied: The Inquisition of Bertrand Russell (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000)Google Scholar.

67 Hook to Dewey, June 18, 1949, Hook Papers, box 175, folder 1.

68 Ibid.

69 Hook to Dewey, June 22, 1949, Hook Papers, box 175, folder 1.

70 Hook to Dewey, June 27, 1949, Hook Papers, box 175, folder 1. Even at the height of the McCarthy era, however, Hook never thought that such a change of course was necessary.

71 Dewey to Hook, Oct. 21, 1949, Hook Papers, box 175, folder 1.

72 Ben Fine, “John Dewey at 90 to Get $90,000 Gift,” New York Times, Oct. 19, 1949, 31.

73 Hook takes credit for helping shift Dewey to the position that he took in the New York Times interview in a letter to George Anastaplo, Dec. 17, 1952, Hook Papers, box 121, folder 5. For other instances where Hook cites Dewey's interview to bolster his position, see his letters to AAUP officials: Sidney Hook to Ralph Himstead, Oct. 21, 1949, Hook Papers, box 132, folder 2; and Sidney Hook to William Laprade, Sep. 22, 1952, Hook Papers, box 5, folder 25.

74 For Hook's lobbying, see the following documents in the Hook Papers: for the AAUP, box 123, folder 2; for the ACLU, box 111, folder 1; for the American Philosophical Association, see the letter from Sidney Hook to Arthur Lovejoy, Nov. 3, 1949, box 121.

75 Sidney Hook to Arthur Lovejoy, Nov. 3, 1949, Hook Papers, box 121, folder 4. On McCarthyism's impact on American philosophy, see McCumber, John, Time in a Ditch: American Philosophy and the McCarthy Era (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

76 “ACCF Press Release: In Defense of Academic Autonomy,” July 13, 1953, American Committee for Cultural Freedom Records, box 8, folder 1, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive, New York University, NY, hereafter ACCF Records. The statement was drafted by Irving Kristol and was endorsed by Hook, Lovejoy, George Counts, and Paul Hays.

77 Arthur Schlesinger Jr. to Irving Kristol, Feb. 22, 1953, ACCF Records, box 8, folder 1. Hook tried unsuccessfully to have Schlesinger embrace the more stridently anti-Communist statement: Sidney Hook to Arthur Schlesinger Jr., March 6, 1953, ACCF Records, box 8, folder 1.

78 Schrecker, No Ivory Tower, 315–37.

79 On New York University's decision to fire Burgum, see Deery, Phillip, “‘Running with the Hounds’: Academic McCarthyism and New York University, 1952–1953,” Cold War History 10 (Nov. 2010), 469–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also, Schrecker, No Ivory Tower, 234–36.

80 Sidney Hook, “Communists Practice ‘Educational Fraud’ Party Membership Is Relevant Question,” Square Bulletin, Oct. 29, 1952, 3.

81 Ibid.

82 Ibid.

83 Most witnesses who did not want to cooperate with HUAC would have preferred to take the First Amendment, but the courts rejected this line of reasoning, so the Fifth Amendment was the only option they had left. See Schrecker, No Ivory Tower, 128–29.

84 Hook, “Communists Practice ‘Educational Fraud.’” In 1957, Hook published a book largely devoted to the argument that the Fifth Amendment should not protect faculty members from dismissal. Hook, Sidney, Common Sense and the Fifth Amendment (New York: Criterion Books, 1957)Google Scholar.

85 Ibid.

86 Ibid.

87 Edwin Burgum, “Professor Burgum's Reply to Dr. Hook,” Square Bulletin, Nov. 7, 1952, 1.

88 Ibid.

89 Ibid.

90 Ibid.

91 “Student Reply to Hook,” undated, probably Nov. 1952, Hook Papers, box 53, folder 13.

92 Ibid.

93 Ibid.

94 Sandra Nemser, “Dr. Heald Tells Chamber of Commerce,” Square Bulletin, Nov. 7, 1952, 1.

95 Jack Randall to Sidney Hook, Dec. 31, 1953, Hook Papers, box 55, folder 15.

96 On the Loyalty Oath controversy, see Blauner, Bob Resisting McCarthyism: To Sign or Not to Sign California's Loyalty Oath (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

97 Randall to Hook, Dec. 31, 1953.

98 Richard Ashman to Sidney Hook, March 11, 1949, Hook Papers, box 121, folder 4.

99 Ibid.

100 Bruce Stewart to Sidney Hook, April 3, 1949, Hook Papers, box 121, folder 4.

101 On the American labor movement and anti-Communism, see Cherny, Robert W., Issel, William, and Taylor, Kieran Walsh, eds., American Labor and the Cold War: Grassroots Politics and Postwar Political Culture (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

102 Sidney Hook to Richard Ashman, March 17, 1949, Hook Papers, box 121, folder 4.

103 Ibid.

104 Hook, Heresy, Yes, 171. See also, Sidney Hook, “Mr. McCarthy Criticized,” New York Times, May 8, 1953, 24.

105 Sidney Hook, Letters to the Times, “Academic Freedom: Integrity of American Scholars and Teachers Affirmed,” New York Times, May 27, 1951, 128.

106 Sidney Hook to Henry Luce, April 17, 1956, Hook Papers, box 123, folder 2. Hook's criticism is then cited favorably in “Professors and Ethics,” Life, May 21, 1956, 44.

107 Schlesinger, Arthur Jr., “Dangerous Nonsense,” The Progressive 17 (Sept. 1953), 8 Google Scholar.

108 Arthur Schlesinger Jr., “The Right to Loathsome Ideas,” Saturday Review of Literature, May 14, 1949, 17–18, 47.

109 Schlesinger, Arthur Jr., “Academic Freedom: A Review Essay,” Journal of Higher Education 27, no. 6 (June 1956), 343 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

110 Hook's later writing on academic freedom would continue to make an impact on these debates. In 1969, he helped found the University Centers for Rational Alternatives, which published a newsletter (Measure) denouncing examples of “McCarthyism from the left.” On the founding of the group, which could use more study by historians of the culture wars, see Goodman, Walter, “Is There a Rational Alternative?” Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning 6, no. 1 (Feb. 1974), 13–15 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also, Hook, Sidney, Academic Freedom and Academic Anarchy (New York: Cowles Book Co, 1970)Google Scholar. For a useful account of changing norms that shifted the debate on academic freedom during the 1960s, see Reuben, Julie, “Challenging Neutrality: Sixties Activism and Debates over Political Advocacy in the American University,” in Professors and Their Politics, ed. Gross, Neil and Simmons, Salons (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press: 2014)Google Scholar.