The Oath

The Oath

March 1947 President Truman establishes a policy stating worldwide opposition to communism

Arthur H. Brayfield, Ph.D

1947 Banning of left-wing student groups and Communist speakers

Robert E. Harris, M.D.

April

Agency is established in the United States

Jacob Loewenberg, Ph.D

1947 The Central Intelligence

1948 The Committee on Academic Freedom states that affiliation with the communist party is not a justifiable reason for termination, so long as it remains a legal party

Leonardo Olshki, Ph.D

1948 Dismissal of Communist professors nationwide

Arthur G. Brodeur, Ph.D

January 1949 Senator Tenney introduces bills in reaction to suspected Communists in government that threaten the autonomy of the University

Edward C. Tolman, Ph.D

January 1949 The Chinese civil war ends in victory for the Chinese Communists

Harold Winkler, Ph.D

1949 Dismissal of Gundlach, Butterworth, and Phillips from the University of Washington

Hubert S. Coffey, Ph.D

January

February 1949 Attention is drawn to the University when Herbert Phillips and Harold Laski participate in an on-campus debate regarding communism in higher education at UCLA

Margaret T. Hodgen, Ph.D

March 1949 The Board of Regents approves a proposal by University President Spraul that would require all employees to swear an oath that they are not members of the Communist Party

Walter D. Fisher, Ph.D

faculty meet to organize against the loyalty oath

Walter Brown, Ph.D

June 1949 Sixty members of the UC

has signed the anti-communist disclaimers

James Hopper, Jr., Ph.D

August 1949 About half of the University faculty

September 1949 HUAC opens an investigation into the alleged infiltration of Berkeley University’s Radiation Laboratory

Harold W. Lewis, Ph.D

September 1949 President Spraul is advised that opposition to the oath is widespread and that a confrontation is inevitable

Stefan Peters, Ph.D

October 1949 Those who refuse to sign the oath formally organize at Berkeley University, led by psychology professor Edward Tolman

R. Nevitt Sanford, Ph.D

non-signing faculty

Gian Carlo Wick, Ph.D

February 1950 The Board of Regents approves a proposal to terminate

April 1950 A modified oath is agreed upon by the Regents, stating that those who do not sign will be subject to a hearing before the Academic Senate’s Committees

Ludwig Edelstein, Ph.D

April 1950 Miriam Sherman, a non-academic employee at UCLA, is fired under suspicion of having Communist sympathies

Walter W. Horn, Ph.D

June 1950 Six out of eighty one cases of non-signers are recommended for termination by the Committees

Edwin S. Fussell, Ph.D

June 1950 North Korea invades South Korea, heightening public awareness and fear on Communism and further illegitimizing the position of non-signers

Ernest H. Kantorowicz, Ph.D

August 1950 Thirty one members of the University faculty are dismissed, including Edward Tolman and David Saxon, who would go on to serve as President of UC nearly a decade later

Margaret Peterson O’Hagan, Ph.D

February 1951 The Academic Senate Committee of Academic Freedom issues a report claiming that the University had been harmed by the un-Constitutional dismissals of the previous summer

Anthony P. Morse, Ph.D

April 1951 The Court of Appeals rules against the Board of Regents in Tolman vs. Underhill, the non-signers’ case for reinstatement, stating that the Regents were in violation of the Constitution

Brewster Rogerson, Ph.D

October 1951 The Regents votes to rescind the loyalty oath requirement, but reaffirms the University’s policy against employing Communists

Emily H. Huntington, Ph.D

October 1952 The Supreme Court rules in favor of the terminated non-signers in Tolman vs. Underhill and orders the University to reinstate the wronged parties

Edward Hetzer Schafer, Ph.D

November 1952 California voters approve the addition of the Levering Oath to the State Constitution

Charles Muscatine, Ph.D

March 1954 Sixteen non-signers reach a settlement in court after seeking full back pay for the months they were unpaid by the University

Joe Tussman, Ph.D

April 1956 The American Association of University Professors states that effect of the University’s action had been to weaken academic freedom and to deny essential rights to the faculty members who resisted the oath

Pauline Sperry, Ph.D

The emotional and professional devastation caused by the widespread fear of Communism in the late 1940s and early to mid-1950s was not limited to the UC school system; across the nation, dozens of academic and nonacademic University employees were dismissed because of their refusal to sign the unlawfully imposed loyalty oaths. In 1955, John McClurg was informed that his contract as a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin would not be renewed after he refused to do just that. This event was preceded by his wife Arline’s dismissal from the UC Berkeley faculty three years earlier. While Mr. McClurg was able to return to higher education as a member of the CU Boulder faculty, his wife never taught above a junior high school level again. Her experience with academia and the anti-communist disclaimers is one that was shared with the vast majority of University employees that were terminated during this time. As a result of this “academic blacklist”, invaluable momentum and years of work were lost, to say nothing of the emotional toll that the oath took upon its victims.